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YOUTH 

ITS  EDUCATION,   REGIMEN,   AND  HYGIENE 


YOUTH 


L6 

V\3S 

ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,        *C> 
AND   HYGIENE 


BY 


G.    STANLEY    HALL,  Ph.D.,   LL.D. 

PRESIDENT  OF  CLARK   UNIVERSITY   AND 

PROFESSOR   OF   PSYCHOLOGY 

AND   PEDAGOGY 


NEW   YORK 

D.   APPLETON   AND   COMPANY 

1906 


'HtH 


Copyright,  1904,  by  D.  Appleton  and  Company 


Copyright,  1906,  by  G.  Stanley  Hall 


&^^ 


ADOLESCENCE 
Copyright,  1904,  by  D.  Appleton  and  Company 


PKEFACE 


I  HAVE  often  been  asked  to  select  and  epitomize  the 
practical  and  especially  the  pedagogical  conclusions  of 
my  large  volumes  on  Adolescence,  published  in  1904,  in 
such  form  that  they  may  be  available  at  a  minimum  cost 
to  parents,  teachers,  reading  circles,  normal  schools,  and 
college  classes,  by  whom  even  the  larger  volumes  have 
been  often  used.  This,  with  the  cooperation  of  the  pub- 
lishers and  with  the  valuable  aid  of  Superintendent  C.  N. 
Kendall  of  Indianapolis,  I  have  tried  to  do,  following 
in  the  main  the  original  text,  with  only  such  minor 
changes  and  additions  as  were  necessary  to  bring  the 
topics  up  to  date,  and  adding  a  new  chapter  on  moral 
and  religious  education.  For  the  scientific  justification 
of  my  educational  conclusions  I  must,  of  course,  refer  to 
the  larger  volumes.  The  last  chapter  is  not  in  "Ado- 
lescence, ' '  but  is  revised  from  a  paper  printed  elsewhere. 
I  am  indebted  to  Dr.  Theodote  L.  Smith  of  Clark  Uni- 
versity for  verification  of  all  references,  proof-reading, 
and  many  minor  changes. 

G.  Stanley  Hall. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I. — Pre-Adolescence. 

Introduction:  Characterization  of  the  age  from  eight  to 
twelve — The  era  of  recapitulating  the  stages  of  primitive 
human  development — Life  close  to  nature — The  age  also 
for  drill,  habituation,  memory  work,  and  regermination — 
Adolescence  superposed  upon  this  stage  of  life,  but  very 
distmct  from  it 1 

II. — The  Muscles  and  Motor  Powers  in  General. 

Muscles  as  organs  of  the  will,  of  character,  and  even  of 
thought — The  muscular  virtues — Fundamental  and  acces- 
sory muscles  and  functions — The  development  of  the  mind 
and  of  the  upright  position — Small  muscles  as  organs  of 
thought — School  lays  too  much  stress  upon  these — Chorea 
— ^Vast  numbers  of  automatic  movements  in  children — 
Great  variety  of  spontaneous  activities — Poise,  control,  and 
spurtiness — Pen  and  tongue  wagging — Sedentary  school 
life  vs.  free  out-of-door  activities — Modern  decay  of  muscles, 
especially  in  girls — Plasticity  of  motor  habits  at  puberty      .       7 

III. — Industrial  Education. 

Trade  classes  and  schools,  their  importance  in  the  interna- 
tional market — Our  dangers  and  the  superiority  of  German 
workmen — ^The  effects  of  a  tariff — Description  of  schools 
between  the  kindergarten  and  the  industrial  school — Equal 
salaries  for  teachers  in  France — Dangers  from  machinery — 
The  advantages  of  life  on  the  old  New  England  farm — Its 
resemblance  to  the  education  we  now  give  negroes  and 
Indians — Its  advantage  for  all-sided  muscular  develop- 
ment      29 

vii 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

IV. — Manual  Training  and  Sloyd. 

History  of  the  movement — Its  philosophy — The  value  of 
hand  training  in  the  development  of  the  brain  and  its  sig- 
nificance in  the  making  of  man — A  grammar  of  our  many 
industries  hard — ^The  best  we  do  can  reach  but  few — Very 
great  defects  in  our  manual  training  methods  which  do  not 
base  on  science  and  make  nothing  salable — The  Leipzig 
system — Sloyd  is  hypermethodic — ^These  crude  peasant  in- 
dustries can  never  satisfy  educational  needs — The  gospel  of 
work;  William  Morris  and  the  arts  and  crafts  movement — • 
Its  spirit  desirable — The  magic  effects  of  a  brief  period  of 
intense  work — The  natural  development  of  the  drawing 
instinct  in  the  child 35 

V. — Gymnastics. 

The  story  of  Jahn  and  the  Turners — The  enthusiasm  which 
this  movement  generated  in  Germany — ^The  ideal  of  bringing 
out  latent  powers — The  concept  of  more  perfect  voluntary 
control — Swedish  gymnastics — Doing  everything  possible 
for  the  body  as  a  machine — Liberal  physical  culture — Ling's 
orthogenic  scheme  of  economic  postures  and  movements  and 
correcting  defects — The  ideal  of  symmetry  and  prescribing 
exercises  to  bring  the  body  to  a  standard — Lamentable  lack 
of  correlation  between  these  four  systems — Illustrations  of 
the  great  good  that  a  systematic  training  can  effect — 
Athletic  records — Greek  physical  training       ....     53 

VI. — Play,  Sports,  and  Games. 

The  view  of  Groos  partial,  and  a  better  explanation  of  play 
proposed  as  rehearsing  ancestral  activities — The  glory  of 
Greek  physical  training,  its  ideals  and  results — The  first 
spontaneous  movements  of  infancy  as  keys  to  the  past — 
Necessity  of  developing  basal  powers  before  those  that  are 
later  and  peculiar  to  the  individual — Plays  that  interest  due 
to  their  antiquity — Play  with  dolls — Play  distinguished  by 
age — Play  preferences  of  children  and  their  reasons — The 
profound  significance  of  rhythm — The  value  of  dancing  and 
also  its  significance,  history,  and  the  desirability  of  rein- 
troducing it  — Fighting — Boxing  — Wrestling — Bushido — 
viii 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

Foot-ball — Military  ideals — Showing  off — Cold  baths — Hill 
climbing — The  playground  movement — The  psychology  of 
play — Its  relation  to  work 73 

VII. — Faults,  Lies,  and  Crimes. 

Classification  of  children's  faults — Peculiar  children — Real 
faults  as  distinguished  from  interference  with  the  teacher's 
ease — Truancy,  its  nature  and  effects — The  genesis  of  crime 
— The  lie,  its  classes  and  relations  to  imagination — Preda- 
tory activities — Gangs — Causes  of  crime — The  effects  of 
stories  of  crime — ^Temibility — Juvenile  crime  and  its  treat- 
ment      120 

VIII. — Biographies  of  Youth. 

Knightly  ideals  and  honor — Thirty  adolescents  from 
Shakespeare — Goethe — C.  D.  Warner — Aldrich — The  fugi- 
tive nature  of  adolescent  experience— Extravagance  of 
autobiographies — Stories  that  attach  to  great  names — Some 
typical  crazes — Illustrations  from  George  Eliot,  Edison, 
Chatterton,  Hawthorne,  Whittier,  Spencer,  Huxley,  Lyell, 
Byron,  Heine,  Napoleon,  Darwin,  Martineau,  Agassiz, 
Madame  Roland,  Louisa  Alcott,  F.  H.  Burnett,  Helen  Keller, 
Marie  Bashkirtseff,  Mary  MacLane,  Ada  Negri,  De  Quincey, 
Stuart  Mill,  Jefferies,  and  scores  of  others        ....    141 

IX. — The  Growth  of  Social  Ideals. 

Change  from  childish  to  adult  friends — Influence  of  favorite 
teachers — What  children  wish  or  plan  to  do  or  be — Property 
and  the  money  sense — Social  judgments — The  only  child — 
First  social  organizations — Student  life — Associations  for 
youth  controlled  by  adults 207 

X. — Intellectual  Education  and  School  Work. 

The  general  change  and  plasticity  at  puberty — English 
teaching — Causes  of  its  failure,  (1)  too  much  time  to  other 
languages,  (2)  subordination  of  literary  content  to  form, 
(3)  too  early  stress  on  eye  and  hand  instead  of  ear  and 
mouth,  (4)  excessive  use  of  concrete  words — Children's 
interest  in  words — Their  favorites — Slang — Story  telling — 
Age  of  reading  crazes — What  to  read — ^The  historic  sense — 

Growth  of  memory  span 234 

ix 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XL — The  Education  of  Girls. 

Equal  opportunities  of  higher  education  now  open — Brings 
new  dangers  to  women — Ineradicable  sex  differences  begin 
at  puberty,  when  the  sexes  should  and  do  diverge — Different 
interests — Sex  tension — Girls  more  mature  than  boys  at  the 
same  age — Radical  psychic  and  physiological  differences 
between  the  sexes — The  bachelor  women — Needed  recon- 
struction— Food — Sleep — Regimen — Manners — Religion — 
Regularity — The  topics  for  a  girls'  curriculum — The  eter- 
nally womanly 277 

XII. — Moral  and  Religious  Training. 

Dangers  of  muscular  degeneration  and  overstimulus  of 
brain — Difficulties  in  teaching  morals — Methods  in  Europe 
— Obedience  to  commands — Good  habits  should  be  mechan- 
ized— Value  of  scolding — How  to  flog  aright — Its  dangers — 
Moral  precepts  and  proverbs — Habituation — Training  will 
through  intellect — Examinations  —  Concentration — Origi- 
nality— Froebel  and  the  naive — First  ideas  of  God — Con- 
science— Importance  of  Old  and  New  Testaments — Sex 
dangers — Love  and  religion — Conversion      .        .  .        .   324 


YOUTH:    ITS   EDUCATION,    REGIMEN, 
AND   HYGIENE 


CHAPTER    I 

PRE-ADOLESCENCE 

Introduction:  Characterization  of  the  age  from  eight  to  twelve — The 
era  of  recapitulating  the  stages  of  primitive  human  development — 
Life  close  to  nature — The  age  also  for  drill,  habituation,  memory 
work,  and  regermination — Adolescence  sujoerposed  upon  this  stage 
of  life,  but  very  distinct  from  it. 

The  years  from  about  eight  to  twelve  constitute  a 
unique  period  of  human  life.  The  acute  stage  of  teeth- 
ing is  passing,  the  brain  has  acquired  nearly  its  adult  size 
and  weight,  health  is  almost  at  its  best,  activity  is  greater 
and  more  varied  than  it  ever  was  before  or  ever  will  be 
again,  and  there  is  peculiar  endurance,  vitality,  and  re- 
sistance to  fatigue.  The  child  develops  a  life  of  its  own 
outside  the  home  circle,  and  its  natural  interests  are 
never  so  independent  of  adult  influence.  Perception  is 
very  acute,  and  there  is  great  immunity  to  exposure, 
danger,  accident,  as  well  as  to  temptation.  Reason,  true 
morality,  religion,  sympathy,  love,  and  esthetic  enjoy- 
ment are  but  very  slightly  developed. 

Everything,  in  short,  suggests  that  this  period  may 
represent  in  the  individual  what  was  once  for  a  very 
protracted  and  relatively  stationary  period  an  age  of 
maturity  in  the  remote  axicestors  of  our  race,  when  the 
young  of  our  species,  who  were  perhaps  pygmoid,  shifted 

1 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

for  themselves  independently  of  further  parental  aid. 
The  qualities  developed  during  pre-adolescence  are,  in 
the  evolutionary  history  of  the  race,  far  older  than  hered- 
itary traits  of  body  and  mind  vv^hich  develop  later  and 
which  may  be  compared  to  a  new  and  higher  story  built 
upon  our  primal  nature.  Heredity  is  so  far  both  more 
stable  and  more  secure.  The  elements  of  personality  are 
few,  but  are  well  organized  on  a  simple,  effective  plan. 
The  momentum  of  these  traits  inherited  from  our  indefi- 
nitely remote  ancestors  is  great,  and  they  are  often 
clearly  distinguishable  from  those  to  be  added  later. 
Thus  the  boy  is  father  of  the  man  in  a  new  sense,  in  that 
his  qualities  are  indefinitely  older  and  existed,  well  com- 
pacted, untold  ages  before  the  more  distinctly  human 
attributes  were  developed.  Indeed  there  are  a  few  faint 
indications  of  an  earlier  age  node,  at  about  the  age  of  six, 
as  if  amid  the  instabilities  of  health  we  could  detect  signs 
that  this  may  have  been  the  age  of  puberty  in  remote  ages 
of  the  past.  I  have  also  given  reasons  that  lead  me  to  the 
conclusion  that,  despite  its  dominance,  the  function  of 
sexual  maturity  and  procreative  power  is  peculiarly 
mobile  up  and  down  the  age-line  independently  of  many 
of  the  qualities  usually  so  closely  associated  with  it,  so 
that  much  that  sex  created  in  the  phylum  now  precedes 
it  in  the  individual. 

Eousseau  would  leave  prepubescent  years  to  nature 
and  to  these  primal  hereditary  impulsions  and  allow  the 
fundamental  traits  of  savagery  their  fling  till  twelve. 
Biological  psychology  finds  many  and  cogent  rea- 
sons to  confirm  this  view  if  only  a  proper  environ- 
ment could  he  provided.  The  child  revels  in  savagery; 
and  if  its  tribal,  predatory,  hunting,  fishing,  fighting, 
roving,  idle,  playing  proclivities  could  be  indulged  in  the 
country  and  under  conditions  that  now,  alas !  seem  hope- 

2 


PRE-ADOLESCENCE 

lessly  ideal,  they  could  conceivably  be  so  organized  and 
directed  as  to  be  far  more  truly  humanistic  and  liberal 
than  all  that  the  best  modern  school  can  provide.  Rudi- 
mentary organs  of  the  soul,  now  suppressed,  perverted,  or 
delayed,  to  crop  out  in  menacing  forms  later,  would  be  de- 
veloped in  their  season  so  that  we  should  be  immune  to 
them  in  maturer  years,  on  the  principle  of  the  Aristote- 
lian catharsis  for  which  I  have  tried  to  suggest  a 
far  broader  application  than  the  Stagirite  could  see 
in   his  day. 

These  inborn  and  more  or  less  savage  instincts  can 
and  should  be  allowed  some  scope.  The  deep  and  strong 
cravings  in  the  individual  for  those  primitive  experiences 
and  occupations  in  which  his  ancestors  became  skilful 
through  the  pressure  of  necessity  should  not  be  ignored, 
but  can  and  should  be,  at  least  partially,  satisfied  in  a 
vicarious  way,  by  tales  from  literature,  history,  and 
tradition  which  present  the  crude  and  primitive  virtues 
of  the  heroes  of  the  world 's  childhood.  In  this  way,  aided 
by  his  vivid  visual  imagination,  the  child  may  enter  upon 
his  heritage  from  the  past,  live  out  each  stage  of  life  to 
its  fullest  and  realize  in  himself  all  its  manifold  ten- 
dencies. Echoes  only  of  the  vaster,  richer  life  of  the 
remote  past  of  the  race  they  must  remain,  but  just  these 
are  the  murmurings  of  the  only  muse  that  can  save  from 
the  omnipresent  dangers  of  precocity.  Thus  we  not  only 
rescue  from  the  danger  of  loss,  but  utilize  for  further 
psychic  growth  the  results  of  the  higher  heredity,  which 
are  the  most  precious  and  potential  things  on  earth. 
So,  too,  in  our  urbanized  hothouse  life,  that  tends  to 
ripen  everything  before  its  time,  we  must  teach  nature, 
although  the  very  phrase  is  ominous.  But  we  must  not, 
in  so  doing,  wean  still  more  from,  but  perpetually  incite 
to   visit,   field,    forest,    hill,    shore,   the   water,    flowers, 

3 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATIOX,  REGIMEX,  AND   HYGIEXE 

animals,  tlie  true  homes  of  cliildhood  in  this  wild,  un- 
domesticated  stage  from  which  modern  conditions  have 
kidnapped  and  transported  him.  Books  and  reading 
are  distasteful,  for  the  very  soul  and  body  cry  out  for  a 
more  active,  objective  life,  and  to  know  nature  and  man 
at  first  hand.  These  two  staples,  stories  and  nature,  by 
these  informal  methods  of  the  home  and  the  environ- 
ment, constitute  fundamental  education. 

But  now  another  remove  from  nature  seems  to  be 
made  necessary  by  the  manifold  knowledges  and  skills 
of  our  highly  complex  civilization,  ^''e  should  trans- 
plant the  human  sapling,  I  concede  reluctantly,  as  early 
as  eight,  but  not  before,  to  the  schoolhouse  with  its  im- 
perfect lighting,  ventilation,  temperature.  ^Ye  must 
shut  out  nature  and  open  books.  The  child  must  sit  on 
unhygienic  benches  and  work  the  tiny  muscles  that  wag 
the  tongue  and  pen,  and  let  all  the  others,  which  consti- 
tute nearly  half  its  weight,  decay.  Even  if  it  be  pre- 
maturely, he  must  be  subjected  to  special  disciplines  and 
be  apprenticed  to  the  higher  qualities  of  adulthood ;  for 
he  is  not  only  a  product  of  nature,  but  a  candidate  for  a 
highly  developed  humanity.  To  many,  if  not  most,  of 
the  influences  here  there  can  be  at  first  but  little  inner 
response.  Insight,  understanding,  interest,  sentiment, 
are  for  the  most  part  only  nascent ;  and  most  that  per- 
tains to  the  true  kingdom  of  mature  manhood  is  em- 
bryonic. The  wisest  requirements  seem  to  the  child  more 
or  less  alien,  arbitrary,  heteronomous,  artificial,  falsetto. 
There  is  much  passivity,  often  active  resistance  and 
evasion,  and  perhaps  spasms  of  obstinacy,  to  it  all.  But 
the  senses  are  keen  and  alert,  reactions  immediate  and 
vigorous ;  and  the  memory  is  quick,  sure  and  lasting ;  and 
ideas  of  space,  time,  and  physical  causation,  and  of  many 
a  moral  and  social  licit  and  non-licit,  are  rapidly  unfold- 

4 


PRE-ADOLESCEXCE 

ing.  Never  again  will  there  be  such  siisceptibility  to 
drill  and  discipline,  such  plasticity  to  habituation,  or  such 
ready  adjustment  to  new  conditions.  It  is  the  age  of 
external  and  mechanical  training.  Reading,  writing, 
drawing,  manual  training,  musical  technic,  foreign 
tongues  and  their  pronunciation,  the  manipulation  of 
numbers  and  of  geometrical  elements,  and  many  kinds  of 
skill  have  now  their  golden  hour ;  and  if  it  passes  unim- 
proved, all  these  can  never  be  acquired  later  without  a 
hea^^^  handicap  of  disadvantage  and  loss.  These  necessi- 
ties may  be  hard  for  the  health  of  body,  sense,  mind,  as 
well  as  for  morals ;  and  pedagogic  art  consists  in  breaking 
the  child  into  them  betimes  as  intensely  and  as  quickly  as 
possible  with  minimal  strain  and  with  the  least  amount 
of  explanation  or  coquetting  for  natural  interest,  and  in 
calling  medicine  confectionery.  This  is  not  teaching  in 
its  true  sense  so  much  as  it  is  drill,  inculcation,  and 
regimentation.  The  method  should  be  mechanical,  re- 
petitive, authoritative,  dogmatic.  The  automatic  powers 
are  now  at  their  very  apex,  and  they  can  do  and 
bear  more  than  our  degenerate  pedagogy  knows  or 
dreams  of.  Here  we  have  something  to  learn  from  the 
schoolmasters  of  the  past  back  to  the  middle  ages,  and 
even  from  the  ancients.  The  greatest  stress,  with  short 
periods  and  few  hours,  incessant  insistence,  incitement, 
and  little  reliance  upon  interest,  reason,  or  work  done 
without  the  presence  of  the  teacher,  should  be  the  guid- 
ing principles  for  pressure  in  these  essentially  formal 
and,  to  the  child,  contentless  elements  of  knowledge. 
These  should  be  sharph^  distinguished  from  the  in- 
digenous, evoking,  and  more  truly  educational  factors 
described  in  the  last  paragraph,  which  are  meaty,  con- 
tent-full, and  relatively  formless  as  to  time  of  day, 
method,  spirit,  and  perhaps  environment  and  personnel 

5 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

of  teacher,  and  possibly  somewhat  in  season  of  the  year, 
almost  as  sharply  as  work  differs  from  play,  or  perhaps 
as  the  virility  of  man  that  loves  to  command  a  phalanx, 
be  a  martinet  and  drill-master,  differs  from  femininity 
which  excels  in  persuasion,  sympathetic  insight,  story- 
telling, and  in  the  tact  that  discerns  and  utilizes  spon- 
taneous interests  in  the  young. 

Adolescence  is  a  new  birth,  for  the  higher  and  more 
completely  human  traits  are  now  born.  The  qualities  of 
body  and  soul  that  now  emerge  are  far  newer.  The  child 
comes  from  and  harks  back  to  a  remoter  past ;  the  adoles- 
cent is  neo-atavistic,  and  in  him  the  later  acquisitions  of 
the  race  slowly  become  prepotent.  Development  is  less 
gradual  and  more  saltatory,  suggestive  of  some  ancient 
period  of  storm  and  stress  when  old  moorings  were 
broken  and  a  higher  level  attained.  The  annual  rate  of 
growth  in  height,  w^eight,  and  strength  is  increased  and 
often  doubled,  and  even  more.  Important  functions, 
previously  non-existent,  arise.  Growth  of  parts  and  or- 
gans loses  its  former  proportions,  some  permanently  and 
some  for  a  season.  Some  of  these  are  still  growing  in 
old  age  and  others  are  soon  arrested  and  atrophy.  The 
old  measures  of  dimensions  become  obsolete,  and  old  har- 
monies are  broken.  The  range  of  individual  differences 
and  average  errors  in  all  physical  measurements  and  all 
psychic  tests  increases.  Some  linger  long  in  the  childish 
stage  and  advance  late  or  slowly,  while  others  push  on 
with  a  sudden  outburst  of  impulsion  to  early  maturity. 
Bones  and  muscles  lead  all  other  tissues,  as  if  they  vied 
with  each  other;  and  there  is  frequent  flabbiness  or  ten- 
sion as  one  or  the  other  leads.  Nature  arms  youth  for 
conflict  with  all  the  resources  at  her  command — speed, 
power  of  shoulder,  biceps,  back,  leg,  jaw — strengthens 
and  enlarges  skull,  thorax,  hips,  makes  man  aggressive 
and  prepares  woman's  frame  for  maternity. 

6 


CHAPTER    II 

THE   MUSCLES   AND   MOTOR   POWERS  IN    GENERAL 

Muscles  as  organs  of  the  will,  of  character,  and  even  of  thought — The 
muscular  virtues — Fundamental  and  accessory  muscles  and  functions 
— The  development  of  the  mind  and  of  the  upright  position — Small 
muscles  as  organs  of  thought — School  lays  too  much  stress  upon  these 
— Chorea — Vast  numbers  of  automatic  movements  in  children — Great 
variety  of  spontaneous  activities — Poise,  control  and  spurtiness — Pea 
and  tongue  wagging — Sedentary  school  life  vs.  free  out-of-door  activ- 
ities— Modern  decay  of  muscles,  especially  in  girls — Plasticity  of 
motor  habits  at  puberty. 

The  muscles  are  by  weight  about  forty-three  per  cent 
of  the  average  adult  male  human  body.  They  expend  a 
large  fraction  of  all  the  kinetic  energy  of  the  adult  body, 
which  a  recent  estimate  places  as  high  as  one-fifth.  The 
cortical  centers  for  the  voluntary  muscles  extend  over 
most  of  the  lateral  psychic  zones  of  the  brain,  so  that 
their  culture  is  brain  building.  In  a  sense  they  are 
organs  of  digestion,  for  which  function  they  play  a  very 
important  role.  Muscles  are  in  a  most  intimate  and 
peculiar  sense  the  organs  of  the  will.  They  have  built  all 
the  roads,  cities,  and  machines  in  the  w^orld,  written  all 
the  books,  spoken  all  the  words,  and,  in  fact,  done  every- 
thing that  man  has  accomplished  w^ith  matter.  If  they 
are  undeveloped  or  grow  relaxed  and  flabby,  the  dread- 
ful chasm  between  good  intentions  and  their  execution 
is  liable  to  appear  and  widen.  Character  might  be  in  a 
sense  defined  as  a  plexus  of  motor  habits.  To  call  con- 
duct three-fourths  of  life,  wuth  Matthew  Arnold ;  to  de- 
scribe man  as  one-third  intellect  and  two-thirds  will,  wdtli 
2  7 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

Schopenhauer;  to  urge  that  man  is  what  he  does  or  that 
he  is  the  sum  of  his  movements,  with  F.  W.  Robertson; 
that  character  is  simply  muscle  habits,  with  Maudsley; 
that  the  age  of  art  is  now  slowly  superseding  the  age  of 
science,  and  that  the  artist  will  drive  out  with  the  pro- 
fessor, with  the  anonymous  author  of  "  Rembrandt  als 
Erzieher  "  ^ ;  that  history  is  consciously  willed  move- 
ments, with  Bluntschli;  or  that  we  could  form  no  con- 
ception of  force  or  energy  in  the  world  but  for  our  own 
muscular  effort;  to  hold  that  most  thought  involves 
change  of  muscle  tension  as  more  or  less  integral  to  it — 
all  this  shows  how  we  have  modified  the  antique  Cice- 
ronian conception  vivere  est  cogitari,^  to  vivere  est  velle,^ 
and  gives  us  a  new  sense  of  the  importance  of  muscular 
development  and  regimen.'* 

Modern  psychology  thus  sees  in  muscles  organs  of 
expression  for  all  efferent  processes.  Beyond  all  their 
demonstrable  functions,  every  change  of  attention  and  of 
psychic  states  generally  plays  upon  them  unconsciously, 
modifying  their  tension  in  subtle  ways  so  that  they  may 
be  called  organs  of  thought  and  feeling  as  well  as  of  will, 
in  which  some  now  see  the  true  Kantian  thing-in-itself 
the  real  substance  of  the  world,  in  the  anthropomor- 
phism of  force.  Habits  even  determine  the  deeper  strata 
of  belief;  thought  is  repressed  action;  and  deeds,  not 
words,  are  the  language  of  complete  men.  The  motor 
areas  are  closely  related  and  largely  identical  with  the 
psychic,  and  muscle  culture  develops  brain-centers  as 
nothing  else  yet  demonstrably  does.  Muscles  are  the 
vehicles  of  habituation,  imitation,  obedience,  character, 
and  even  of  manners  and  customs.  For  the  young, 
motor  education  is  cardinal,  and  is  now  coming  to  due 

»  Dieterich.     Gottingen,  1886.  2  To  live  is  to  think. 

3  To  live  is  to  will.  See  Chap.  xii. 

8 


MUSCLES   AND   MOTOR   POWERS   IN   GENERAL 

recognition ;  and,  for  all,  education  is  incomplete  without 
a  motor  side.  Skill,  endurance,  and  perseverance  may 
almost  be  called  muscular  virtues;  and  fatigue,  velleity, 
caprice,  ennui,  restlessness,  lack  of  control  and  poise, 
muscular  faults. 

To  understand  the  momentous  changes  of  motor 
functions  that  characterize  adolescence  we  must  con- 
sider other  than  the  measurable  aspects  of  the  subject. 
Perhaps  the  best  scale  on  which  to  measure  all  normal 
growth  of  muscle  structure  and  functions  is  found  in  the 
progress  from  fundamental  to  accessory.  The  former 
designates  the  muscles  and  movements  of  the  trunk  and 
large  joints,  neck,  back,  hips,  shoulders,  knees,  and 
elbows,  sometimes  called  central,  and  which  in  general 
man  has  in  common  with  the  higher  and  larger  annuals. 
Their  activities  are  few,  mostly  simultaneous,  alternating 
and  rhythmic,  as  of  the  legs  in  walking,  and  predomi- 
nate in  hard-working  men  and  women  with  little  culture 
or  intelligence,  and  often  in  idiots.  The  latter  or  acces- 
sory movements  are  those  of  the  hand,  tongue,  face, 
and  articulatory  organs,  and  these  may  be  connected  into 
a  long  and  greatly  diversified  series,  as  those  used  in 
writing,  talking,  piano-playing.  They  are  represented 
by  smaller  and  more  numerous  muscles,  whose  functions 
develop  later  in  life  and  represent  a  higher  standpoint 
of  evolution.  These  smaller  muscles  for  finer  move- 
ments come  into  function  later  and  are  chiefly  associated 
with  psychic  activity,  which  plays  upon  them  by  inces- 
santly changing  their  tensions,  if  not  causing  actual 
movement.  It  is  these  that  are  so  liable  to  disorder  in 
the  many  automatisms  and  choreic  tics  we  see  in  school 
children,  especially  if  excited  or  fatigued.  General 
paralysis  usually  begins  in  the  higher  levels  by  breaking 
these  down,  so  that  the  first  symptom  of  its  insidious  and 

9 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

never  interrupted  progress  is  inability  to  execute  the 
more  exact  and  delicate  movements  of  tongue  or  hand, 
or  both.  Starting  with  the  latest  evolutionary  level,  it 
is  a  devolution  that  may  work  downward  till  very  many 
of  the  fundamental  activities  are  lost  before  death. 

Nothing  better  illustrates  this  distinction  than  the 
difference  between  the  fore  foot  of  animals  and  the  hu- 
man hand.  The  first  begins  as  a  fin  or  paddle  or  is  armed 
with  a  hoof,  and  is  used  solely  for  locomotion.  Some 
earnivora  with  claws  use  the  fore  limb  also  for  holding 
as  well  as  tearing,  and  others  for  digging.  Arboreal  life 
seems  to  have  almost  created  the  simian  hand  and  to  have 
wrought  a  revolution  in  the  form  and  use  of  the  forearm 
and  its  accessory  organs,  the  fingers.  Apes  and  other 
tree-climbing  creatures  must  not  only  adjust  their  pre- 
hensile organ  to  a  wide  variety  of  distances  and  sizes  of 
branches,  but  must  use  the  hands  more  or  less  freely  for 
picking,  transporting,  and  eating  fruit;  and  this  has 
probably  been  a  prime  factor  in  lifting  man  to  the  erect 
position,  without  which  human  intelligence  as  we  know 
it  could  have  hardly  been  possible.  ' '  When  we  attempt 
to  measure  the  gap  between  man  and  the  lower  animals 
in  terms  of  the  form  of  movement,  the  wonder  is  no  less 
great  than  when  we  use  the  term  of  mentality. ' '  ^  The 
degree  of  approximation  to  human  intelligence  in  anthro- 
poid animals  follows  very  closely  the  degree  of  approxi- 
mation to  human  movements. 

The  gradual  acquirement  of  the  erect  position  by  the 
human  infant  admirably  repeats  this  long  phylogenetic 
evolution.-     At  first  the  limbs  are  of  almost  no  use  in 


1  F.  Burk  in  From  Fundamental  to  Accessory.      Pedagogical  Semi- 
nary, Oct.,  1898,  vol.  6,  pp.  5-64. 

2  Creeping  and  Walking,  by  A.  W.  Trettien.     American  Journal  of 
Psychology,  October,  1900,  vol.  12,  pp.  1-57. 

10 


MUSCLES  AND  MOTOR  POWERS   IN   GENERAL 

locomotion,  but  the  fundamental  trunk  muscles  with 
those  that  move  the  large  joints  are  more  or  less  spas- 
modically active.  Then  comes  creeping,  with  use  of  the 
hip  muscles,  while  all  below  the  knee  is  useless,  as  also 
are  the  fingers.  Slowly  the  leg  and  foot  are  degraded  to 
locomotion,  slowly  the  great  toe  becomes  more  limited  in 
its  action,  the  thumb  increases  in  flexibility  and 
strength  of  opposition,  and  the  fingers  grow  more  mobile 
and  controllable.  As  the  body  slowly  assumes  the  verti- 
cal attitude,  the  form  of  the  chest  changes  till  its  greatest 
diameter  is  transverse  instead  of  from  front  to  back. 
The  shoulder-blades  are  less  parallel  than  in  quadrupeds, 
and  spread  out  till  they  approximate  the  same  plane. 
This  gives  the  arm  freedom  of  movement  laterally,  so 
that  it  can  be  rotated  one  hundred  and  eighty  degrees  in 
man  as  contrasted  to  one  hundred  degrees  in  apes,  thus 
giving  man  the  command  of  almost  any  point  within 
a  sphere  of  which  the  two  arms  are  radii.  The  power 
of  grasping  was  partly  developed  from  and  partly  added 
to  the  old  locomotor  function  of  the  fore  limbs ;  the  jerky 
aimless  automatisms,  as  well  as  the  slow  rhythmic  flexion 
and  extension  of  the  fingers  and  hand,  movements  which 
are  perhaps  .survivals  of  arboreal  or  of  even  earlier 
aquatic  life,  are  coordinated ;  and  the  bilateral  and  si- 
multaneous rhythmic  movements  of  the  heavier  muscles 
are  supplemented  by  the  more  finely  adjusted  and  spe- 
cialized activities  which  as  the  end  of  the  growth  period 
is  approached  are  dete**mined  less  by  heredity  and 
more  by  environment.  In  a  sense,  a  child  or  a  man  is  the 
sum  total  of  his  movements  or  tendencies  to  move;  and 
nature  and  instinct  chiefly  determine  the  basal,  and  edu- 
cation the  accessory  parts  of  our  activities. 

The  entire  accessory  system  is  thus  of  vital  impor- 
tance for  the  development  of  all  of  the  arts  of  expression. 

11 


YOUTH  :  ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

These  smaller  muscles  might  almost  be  called  organs  of 
thought.  Their  tension  is  modified  with  the  faintest 
change  of  soul,  such  as  is  seen  in  accent,  inflection,  facial 
expressions,  handwriting,  and  many  forms  of  so-called 
mind-reading,  which,  in  fact,  is  always  muscle-reading. 
The  day-laborer  of  low  intelligence,  with  a  practical 
vocabulary  of  not  over  five  hundred  words,  who  can 
hardly  move  each  of  his  fingers  without  moving  others 
or  all  of  them,  who  can  not  move  his  brows  or  corrugate 
his  forehead  at  will,  and  whose  inflection  is  very  monoto- 
nous, illustrates  a  condition  of  arrest  or  atrophy  of  this 
later,  finer,  accessory  system  of  muscles.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  child,  precocious  in  any  or  all  of  these  later 
respects,  is  very  liable  to  be  undeveloped  in  the  larger 
and  more  fundamental  parts  and  functions.  The  full 
unfoldment  of  each  is,  in  fact,  an  inexorable  condition 
precedent  for  the  normal  development  to  full  and  abid- 
ing maturity  of  the  higher  and  more  refined  muscularity, 
just  as  conversely  the  awkwardness  and  clumsiness  of 
adolescence  mark  a  temporary  loss  of  balance  in  the 
opposite  direction.  If  this  general  conception  be  correct, 
then  nature  does  not  finish  the  basis  of  her  pyramid  in 
the  way  Ross,  Mercier,  and  others  have  assumed,  but 
lays  a  part  of  the  foundation  and,  after  carrying  it  to 
an  apex,  normally  goes  back  and  adds  to  the  foundation 
to  carry  up  the  apex  still  higher  and,  if  prevented  from 
so  doing,  expends  her  energy  in  building  the  apex  up  at  a 
sharper  angle  till  instability  results.  School  and  kinder- 
garten often  lay  a  disproportionate  strain  on  the  tiny  ac- 
cessory muscles,  weighing  altogether  but  a  few  ounces, 
that  wag  the  tongue,  move  the  pen,  and  do  fine  work  re- 
quiring accuracy.  But  still  at  this  stage  prolonged  work 
requiring  great  accuracy  is  irksome  and  brings  dangers 
homologous  to  those  caused  by  too  much  fine  work  in  the 

12 


MUSCLES  AND  MOTOR   POWERS   IN   GENERAL 

kindergarten  before  the  first  adjustment  of  large  to 
small  muscles,  which  lasts  until  adolescence,  is  estab- 
lished. Then  disproportion  between  function  and 
growth  often  causes  symptoms  of  chorea.  The  chief 
danger  is  arrest  of  the  development  and  control  of  the 
smaller  muscles.  Many  occupations  and  forms  of  athlet- 
ics, on  the  contrary,  place  the  stress  mainly  upon  groups 
of  fundamental  muscles  to  the  neglect  of  finer  motor  pos- 
sibilities. Some  who  excel  in  heavy  athletics  no  doubt 
coarsen  their  motor  reactions,  become  not  only  inexact 
and  heavy  but  unresponsive  to  finer  stimuli,  as  if  the 
large  muscles  were  hypertrophied  and  the  small  ones  ar- 
rested. On  the  other  hand,  many  young  men,  and  prob- 
ably more  young  women,  expend  too  little  of  their  avail- 
able active  energy  upon  basal  and  massive  muscle  work, 
and  cultivate  too  much,  and  above  all  too  early,  the 
delicate  responsive  work.  This  is,  perhaps,  the  best 
physiological  characterization  of  precocity  and  issues  in 
excessive  nervous  and  muscular  irritability.  The  great 
influx  of  muscular  vigor  that  unfolds  during  adolescent 
years  and  which  was  originally  not  only  necessary  to  suc- 
cessful propagation,  but  expressive  of  virility,  seems 
to  be  a  very  plastic  quantity,  so  that  motor  regimen  and 
exercise  at  this  stage  is  probably  more  important  and 
all-conditioning  for  mentality,  sexuality,  and  health  than 
at  any  other  period  of  life.  Intensity,  and  for  a  time  a 
spurty  diathesis,  is  as  instinctive  and  desirable  as  are  the 
copious  minor  automatisms  which  spontaneously  give  the 
alphabet  out  of  which  complex  and  finer  motor  series  are 
later  spelled  by  the  conscious  will.  Mercier  and  others 
have  pointed  out  that,  as  most  skilled  labor,  so  school 
work  and  modern  activities  in  civilized  life  generally  lay 
premature  and  disproportionate  strains  upon  those  kinds 
of   movement   requiring   exactness.     Stress   upon   basal 

13 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

movements  is  not  only  compensating  but  is  of  higher 
therapeutic  value  against  the  disorders  of  the  accessory 
system;  it  constitutes  the  best  cure  or  prophylactic  for 
fidgets  and  tense  states,  and  directly  develops  poise,  con- 
trol, and  psycho-physical  equilibrium.  Even  when  con- 
tractions reach  choreic  intensity  the  best  treatment  is  to 
throw  activities  down  the  scale  that  measures  the  differ- 
ence between  primary  and  secondary  movements  and 
to  make  the  former  predominate. 

The  number  of  movements,  the  frequency  with  which 
they  are  repeated,  their  diversity,  the  number  of  combi- 
nations, and  their  total  kinetic  quantum  in  young  chil- 
dren, whether  we  consider  movements  of  the  body  as  a 
whole,  fundamental  movements  of  large  limbs,  or  finer 
accessory  motions,  is  amazing.  Nearly  every  external 
stimulus  is  answered  by  a  motor  response.  Dresslar  ^  ob- 
served a  thirteen  months^  old  baby  for  four  hours,  and 
found,  to  follow  Preyer's  classification,  impulsive  or 
spontaneous,  reflex,  instinctive,  imitative,  inhibitive,  ex- 
pressive, and  even  deliberative  movements,  with  marked 
satisfaction  in  rhythm,  attempts  to  do  almost  anything 
which  appealed  to  him,  and  almost  inexhaustible  efferent 
resources.  A  friend  has  tried  to  record  every  word  ut- 
tered by  a  four-year-old  girl  during  a  portion  of  a  day, 
and  finds  nothing  less  than  verbigerations.  A  teacher 
noted  the  activities  of  a  fourteen-year-old  boy  during  the 
study  time  of  a  single  school  day,^  with  similar  results. 

Lindley  ^  studied  897  common  motor  automatisms  in 
children,  which  he  divided  into  92  classes:  45  in  the  re- 

1  A  Morning  Observation  of  a  Baby.  Pedagogical  Seminary,  Decem- 
ber, 1901,  vol.  8,  pp.  469-481. 

2  Kate  Carman.  Notes  on  School  Activity.  Pedagogical  Seminary, 
March,  1902,  vol.  9,  pp.  106-117. 

3  A  Preliminary  Study  of  Some  of  the  Motor  Phenomena  of  Mental 
Effort.     American  Journal  of  Psychology,  July,  1896,  vol.  7,  pp.  491-517. 

14 


MUSCLES  AND  MOTOR  POWERS   IN   GENERAL 

gion  of  the  head,  20  in  the  feet  and  legs,  19  in  the  hands 
and  fingers.  Arranged  in  the  order  of  frequency  with 
which  each  was  found,  the  list  stood  as  follows :  fingers, 
feet,  lips,  tongue,  head,  body,  hands,  mouth,  eyes,  jaws, 
legs,  forehead,  face,  arms,  ears.  In  the  last  five  alone 
adolescents  exceeded  children,  the  latter  excelling  the 
former  most  in  those  of  head,  mouth,  legs,  and  tongue, 
in  this  order.  The  writer  believes  that  there  are  many 
more  automatisms  than  appeared  in  his  returns. 

School  life,  especially  in  the  lower  grades,  is  a  rich 
field  for  the  study  of  these  activities.  They  are  familiar, 
as  licking  things,  clicking  with  the  tongue,  grinding  the 
teeth,  scratching,  tapping,  twirling  a  lock  of  hair  or 
chewing  it,  biting  the  nails  (Berillon's  onychophagia), 
shrugging,  corrugating,  pulling  buttons  or  twisting 
garments,  strings,  etc.,  twirling  pencils,  thumbs,  rotat- 
ing, nodding  and  shaking  the  head,  squinting  and  wink- 
ing, swaying,  pouting  and  grimacing,  scraping  the  floor, 
rubbing  hands,  stroking,  patting,  flicking  the  fingers, 
wagging,  snapping  the  fingers,  snuffling,  squinting,  pick- 
ing the  face,  interlacing  the  fingers,  cracking  the  joints, 
finger  plays,  biting  and  nibbling,  trotting  the  leg,  suck- 
ing things,  etc. 

The  average  number  of  automatisms  per  100  persons 
Smith  found  to  be  in  children  176,  in  adolescents  110. 
Swaying  is  chiefly  with  children ;  playing  and  drumming 
with  the  fingers  is  more  common  among  adolescents ;  the 
movements  of  fingers  and  feet  decline  little  with  age,  and 
those  of  eyes  and  forehead  increase,  which  is  significant 
for  the  development  of  attention.  Girls  excel  greatly  in 
swaying,  and  also,  although  less,  in  finger  automatism; 
and  boys  lead  in  movements  of  tongue,  feet,  and  hands. 
Such  movements  increase,  with  too  much  sitting,  inten- 
sity of  effort,  such  as  to  fix  attention,  and  vary  with  the 

15 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

nature  of  the  activity  willed,  but  involve  few  muscles 
directly  used  in  a  given  task.  They  increase  up  the 
kindergarten  grades  and  fall  off  rapidly  in  the  primary 
grades;  are  greater  with  tasks  requiring  fine  and  exact 
movements  than  with  those  involving  large  movements. 
Automatisms  are  often  a  sign  of  the  difficulty  of  tasks. 
The  restlessness  that  they  often  express  is  one  of  the  com- 
monest signs  of  fatigue.  They  are  mostly  in  the  acces- 
sory muscles,  while  those  of  the  fundamental  muscles 
(body,  legs,  and  arms)  disappear  rapidly  with  age; 
those  of  eye,  brow,  and  jaw  show  greatest  increase  with 
age,  but  their  frequenc}^  in  general  declines  with  growing 
maturity,  although  there  is  increased  frequency  of  cer- 
tain specialized  contractions,  which  indicate  the  gradual 
settling  of  expression  in  the  face. 

Often  such  movements  pass  over  by  insensible  grada- 
tion into  the  morbid  automatism  of  chorea,  and  in  yet 
lower  levels  of  decay  we  see  them  in  the  aimless  picking 
and  plucking  movements  of  the  fingers  of  the  sick.  In 
idiots  ^  arrest  of  higher  powers  often  goes  with  hyper- 
trophy of  these  movements,  as  seen  in  head-beaters  (as 
if,  just  as  nature  impels  those  partially  blind  to  rub  the 
eyes  for  ^'  light-hunger,"  so  it  prompts  the  feeble- 
minded to  strike  the  head  for  cerebrations),  rockers, 
rackers,  shakers,  biters,  etc.  Movements  often  pass  to 
fixed  attitudes  and  postures  of  limbs  or  body,  disturbing 
the  normal  balance  between  flexors  and  extensors,  the 
significance  of  which  as  nerve  signs  or  exponents  of 
habitual  brain  states  and  tensions  Warner  has  so  admir- 
ably shown. 

Abundance  and  vigor  of  automatic  movements  are 
desirable,  and  even  a  considerable  degree  of  restlessness 

» G.    E.    Johnson.     Psychology    and    Pedagogy    of    Feeble-Minded 
Children.     Pedagogical  Seminary,  October,  1895,  vol.  3,  pp.  246-301. 

16 


MUSCLES   AND  MOTOR  POWERS   IN   GENERAL 

is  a  good  sign  in  young  children.  ]\Iany  of  what  are 
now  often  called  nerve  signs  and  even  choreic  symp- 
toms, the  fidgetiness  in  school  on  cloudy  days  and  often 
after  a  vacation,  the  motor  superfluities  of  awkwardness, 
embarrassment,  extreme  effort,  excitement,  fatigue, 
sleepiness,  etc.,  are  simply  the  forms  in  which  we  re- 
ceive the  full  momentum  of  heredity  and  mark  a 
natural  richness  of  the  raw  material  of  intellect,  feel- 
ing, and  especially  of  will.  Hence  they  must  be  abun- 
dant. All  parts  should  act  in  all  possible  ways  at  first 
and  untrammeled  by  the  activity  of  all  other  parts  and 
functions.  Some  of  these  activities  are  more  essential 
for  growth  in  size  than  are  later  and  more  conscious 
movements.  Here  as  everywhere  the  rule  holds  that 
powers  themselves  must  be  unfolded  before  the  ability 
to  check  or  even  to  use  them  can  develop.  All  move- 
ments arising  from  spontaneous  activity  of  nerve  cells 
or  centers  must  be  made  in  order  even  to  avoid  the 
atrophy  of  disease.  Not  only  so,  but  this  purer  kind 
of  innateness  must  often  be  helped  out  to  some  extent 
in  some  children  by  stimulating  reflexes ;  a  rich  and  wide 
repertory  of  sensation  must  be  made  familiar;  more  or 
less  and  very  guarded,  watched  and  limited  experiences 
of  hunger,  thirst,  cold,  heat,  tastes,  sounds,  smells, 
colors,  brightnesses,  tactile  irritations,  and  perhaps  even 
occasional  tickling  and  pain  to  play  off  the  vastly  com- 
plex function  of  laughing,  crying,  etc.,  may  in  some 
cases  be  judicious.  Conscious  and  unconscious  imita- 
tion or  repetition  of  every  sort  of  copy  may  also  help 
to  establish  the  immediate  and  low-level  connection  be- 
tween afferent  and  efferent  processes  that  brings  the 
organism  into  direct  rapport  and  harmony  with  the 
whole  world  of  sense.  Perhaps  the  more  rankly  and  in- 
dependently they  are  developed  to  full  functional  in- 

17 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

tegrity,  each  in  its  season,  if  we  only  knew  that  sea- 
son, the  better.  Premature  control  by  higher  centers, 
or  coordination  into  higher  compounds  of  habits  and 
ordered  serial  activities,  is  repressive  and  wasteful,  and 
the  mature  will  of  which  they  are  components,  or  which 
must  at  least  domesticate  them,  is  stronger  and  more 
forcible  if  this  serial  stage  is  not  unduly  abridged. 

But,  secondly,  many,  if  not  most,  of  these  activities 
when  developed  a  little,  group  after  group,  as  they  arise, 
must  be  controlled,  checked,  and  organized  into  higher 
and  often  more  serial  compounds.  The  inhibiting  func- 
tions are  at  first  hard.  In  trying  to  sit  still  the  child 
sets  its  teeth,  holds  the  breath,  clenches  its  fists  and  per- 
haps makes  every  muscle  tense  with  a  great  effort  that 
very  soon  exhausts.  This  repressive  function  is  prob- 
ably not  worked  from  special  nervous  centers,  nor  can 
we  speak  with  confidence  of  collisions  with  ''  sums 
of  arrest  "  in  a  sense  analogous  to  that  of  Herbart,  or 
of  stimuli  that  normally  cause  catabolic  molecular  proc- 
esses in  the  cells,  being  mysteriously  diverted  to  pro- 
duce increased  instability  or  anabolic  lability  in  the 
sense  of  Wundt's  Mechanik  der  N erven.  The  concept 
now  suggested  by  many  facts  is  that  inhibition  is  irradi- 
ation or  long  circuiting  to  higher  and  more  complex 
brain  areas,  so  that  the  energy,  whether  spontaneous  or 
reflex,  is  diverted  to  be  used  elsewhere.  These  combina- 
tions are  of  a  higher  order,  more  remote  from  reflex 
action,  and  modified  by  some  Jacksonian  third  level. ^ 


1  Dr.  Hughlings  Jackson,  the  eminent  English  pathologist,  was  the 
first  to  make  practical  application  of  the  evolutionary  theory  of  the 
nervous  system  to  the  diagnosis  and  treatment  of  epilepsies  and  mental 
diseases.  The  practical  success  of  this  application  was  so  great  that  the 
Ilughlings-Jackson  "three-level  theory"  is  now  the  established  basis  of 
lOnglish  diagnosis.  He  conceived  the  nervous  mechanism  as  composed 
of  three  systems,  arranged  in  the  form  of  a  hierarchy,  the  higher  including 

18 


MUSCLES   AND   MOTOR  POWERS   IN   GENERAL 

Action  is  now  not  from  independent  centers,  but  these 
are  slowly  associated,  so  that  excitation  may  flow  off 
from  one  point  to  any  other  and  any  reaction  may  re- 
sult from  any  stimulus. 

The  more  unified  the  brain  the  less  it  suffers  from 
localization,  and  the  lower  is  the  level  to  which  any  one 
function  can  exhaust  the  whole.  The  tendency  of  each 
group  of  cells  to  discharge  or  overflow  into  those  of 
lower  tension  than  themselves  increases  as  correspond- 
ence in  time  and  space  widens.  The  more  one  of  a 
number  of  activities  gains  in  power  to  draw  on  all  the 
brain,  or  the  more  readily  the  active  parts  are  fed  at  cost 
of  the  resting  parts,  the  less  is  rest  to  be  found  in 
change  from  one  of  these  activities  to  another,  and  the 
less  do  concentration  and  specialization  prove  to  be  dan- 
gerous.   Before,  the  aim  was  to  wake  all  parts  to  func- 

the  lower,  and  yet  each  having  a  certain  degree  of  independence.  The 
first  level  represents  the  type  of  simplest  reflex  and  involuntary  move- 
ment and  is  localized  in  the  gray  matter  of  the  spinal  cord,  medulla,  and 
pons.  The  second,  or  middle  level,  comprises  those  structures  which 
receive  sensory  impulses  from  the  cells  of  the  lowest  level  instead  of 
directly  from  the  periphery  or  the  non-nervous  tissues.  The  motor  cells 
of  this  middle  level  also  discharge  into  the  motor  mechanisms  of  the 
lowest  level.  Jackson  located  these  middle  level  structures  in  the  cortex 
of  the  central  convolutions,  the  basal  ganglia  and  the  centers  of  the 
special  senses  in  the  cortex.  The  highest  level  bears  the  same  relation 
to  the  middle  level  that  it  bears  to  the  lowest  i.e.,  no  continuous  connec- 
tion between  the  highest  and  the  lowest  level  is  assumed;  the  structures 
of  the  middle  level  mediate  between  them  as  a  system  of  relays.  Accord- 
ing to  this  hierarchical  arrangement  of  the  nervous  system,  the  lowest 
level  which  is  the  simplest  and  oldest  "contains  the  mechanism  for  the 
simple  fundamental  movements  in  reflexes  and  involuntary  reactions. 
The  second  level  regroups  these  simple  movements  by  combinations  and 
associations  of  cortical  structures  in  wider,  more  complex  mechanisms, 
producing  a  higher  class  of  movements.  The  highest  level  unifies  the 
whole  nervous  system  and,  according  to  Jackson,  is  the  anatomical  basis 
of  mind." 

For  a  fuller  account  of  this  theory  see  Burk :  From  Fundamental  to 
Accessory  in  the  Nervous  System  and  of  Movements.  Pedagogical 
Seminary,  October,  1898,  vol.  6,  pp.  17-23. 

19 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

tion ;  DOW  it  is  to  connect  them.  Intensity  of  this  cross- 
section  activity  now  tends  to  unity,  so  that  all  parts  of 
the  brain  energize  together.  In  a  brain  with  this  switch- 
board function  well  organized,  each  reaction  has  grown 
independent  of  its  own  stimulus  and  may  result  from 
any  stimulation,  and  each  act,  e.  g.,  a  finger  movement 
of  a  peculiar  nature,  may  tire  the  whole  brain.  This 
helps  us  to  understand  why  brain-workers  so  often  excel 
laborers  not  only  in  sudden  dynamometric  strength  test, 
but  in  sustained  and  long-enduring  effort.  In  a  good 
brain  or  in  a  good  machine,  power  may  thus  be  de- 
veloped over  a  large  surface,  and  all  of  it  applied  to  a 
small  one,  and  hence  the  dangers  of  specialization  are 
lessened  in  exact  proportion  as  the  elements  of  our  ego 
are  thus  compacted  together.  It  is  in  the  variety  and 
delicacy  of  these  combinations  and  all  that  they  imply, 
far  more  than  in  the  elements  of  which  they  are  com- 
posed, that  man  rises  farthest  above  the  higher  animals; 
and  of  these  powers  later  adolescence  is  the  golden  age. 
The  aimless  and  archaic  movements  of  infancy,  whether 
massive  and  complex  or  in  the  form  of  isolated  auto- 
matic tweaks  or  twinges,  are  thus,  by  slow  processes  of 
combined  analysis  and  synthesis,  involving  changes  as 
radical  as  any  in  all  the  world  of  growth,  made  over 
into  habits  and  conduct  that  fit  the  world  of  present 
environment. 

But,  thirdly,  this  long  process  carried  out  with  all 
degrees  of  completeness  may  be  arrested  at  any  unfin- 
ished stage.  Some  automatisms  refuse  to  be  controlled 
by  the  will,  and  both  they  and  it  are  often  overworked. 
Here  we  must  distinguish  constantly  between  (1)  those 
growing  rankly  in  order  to  be  later  organized  under  the 
will,  and  (2)  those  that  have  become  feral  after  this 
domestication  of  them  has  lost  power  from  disease  or 

20 


MUSCLES  AND  MOTOR   POWERS   IN   GENERAL 

fatigue,  and  (3)  those  that  have  never  been  subju- 
gated because  the  central  power  that  should  have 
used  them  to  weave  the  texture  of  willed  action 
— the  proper  language  of  complete  manhood — ^w^as 
itself  arrested  or  degenerate.  With  regard  to  many 
of  these  movements  these  distinctions  can  be  made 
with  confidence,  and  in  some  children  more  cer- 
tainly than  in  others.  In  childhood,  before  twelve, 
the  efferent  patterns  should  be  developed  into  many 
more  or  less  indelible  habits,  and  their  colors  set  fast. 
Motor  specialties  requiring  exactness  and  grace  like 
piano-playing,  drawling,  writing,  pronunciation  of  a 
foreign  tongue,  dancing,  acting,  singing,  and  a  host  of 
virtuosities,  must  be  well  begun  before  the  relative  ar- 
rest of  accessory  growth  at  the  dawn  of  the  ephebic 
regeneration  and  before  its  great  afflux  of  strength. 
The  facts  seem  to  show  that  children  of  this  age,  such  as 
Hancock  ^  described,  who  could  not  stand  with  feet  close 
together  and  eyes  closed  without  swaying  much,  could 
not  walk  backward,  sit  still  half  a  minute,  dress  alone, 
tie  two  ends  of  a  string  together,  interlace  slats,  wind 
thread,  spin  a  top,  stand  on  toes  or  heels,  hop  on  each 
foot,  drive  a  nail,  roll  a  hoop,  skate,  hit  fingers  together 
rapidly  in  succession  beginning  at  the  little  finger  and 
then  reversing,  etc.,  are  the  very  ones  in  whom  autom- 
atisms are  most  marked  or  else  they  are  those  consti- 
tutionally inert,  dull,  or  uneducable. 

In  children  these  motor  residua  may  persist  as  char- 
acteristic features  of  inflection,  accent,  or  manners; 
automatisms  may  become  morbid  in  stammering  or  stut- 
tering, or  they  may  be  seen  in  gait,  handwriting,  tics 

1  A  Preliminary  Study  of  Some  of  the  Motor  Phenomena  of  Mental 
Effort.  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  July,  1896,  vol.  7,  pp.  491- 
517. 

21 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

or  tweaks,  etc.  Instead  of  disappearing  with  age,  as 
they  should,  they  are  seen  in  the  blind  as  facial  grimaces 
uncorrected  by  the  mirror  or  facial  consciousness,  in  the 
deaf  as  inarticulate  noises;  and  they  may  tend  to  grow 
monstrous  with  age  as  if  they  were  disintegrated  frag- 
ments of  our  personality,  split  off  and  aborted,  or  motor 
parasites  leaving  our  psycho-physic  ego  poorer  in  energy 
and  plasticity  of  adaptation,  till  the  distraction  and 
anarchy  of  the  individual  nature  becomes  conspicuous 
and  pathetic. 

At  puberty,  however,  when  muscle  habits  are  so 
plastic,  when  there  is  a  new  relation  between  quantity 
or  volume  of  motor  energy  and  qualitative  differenti- 
ation, and  between  volitional  control  and  reflex  activi- 
ties, these  kinetic  remnants  strongly  tend  to  shoot  to- 
gether into  wrong  aggregates  if  right  ones  are  not 
formed.  Good  manners  and  correct  motor  form  gener- 
ally, as  well  as  skill,  are  the  most  economic  ways  of  doing 
things;  but  this  is  the  age  of  wasteful  ways,  awkward- 
ness, mannerisms,  tensions  that  are  a  constant  leakage 
of  vital  energy,  perhaps  semi-imperative  acts,  con- 
tortions, quaint  movements,  more  elaborated  than  in 
childhood  and  often  highly  unesthetic  and  disagreeable, 
motor  coordinations  that  will  need  laborious  decomposi- 
tion later.  The  avoidable  factor  in  their  causation  is, 
with  some  modification,  not  unlike  that  of  the  simpler 
feral  movements  and  faulty  attitudes,  carriage,  and  pos- 
tures in  children;  viz.,  some  form  of  overpressure  or  mis- 
fit between  environment  and  nature.  As  during  the  years 
from  four  to  eight  there  is  great  danger  that  over- 
emphasis of  the  activities  of  the  accessory  muscles  will 
sow  the  seeds  of  chorea,  or  aggravate  predispositions  to 
it,  now  again  comes  a  greatly  increased  danger,  hardly 
existing  from  eight  to  twelve,   that  overprecision,   es- 

22 


MUSCLES   AND  MOTOR  POWERS   IN   GENERAL 

pecially  if  fundamental  activities  are  neglected,  will 
bring  nervous  strain  and  stunting  precocity.  This  is 
again  the  age  of  the  basal,  e.  g.,  hill-climbing  muscles,  of 
leg  and  back  and  shoulder  work,  and  of  the  yet  more 
fundamental  heart,  lung,  and  chest  muscles.  Now  again, 
the  study  of  a  book,  under  the  usual  conditions  of  sit- 
ting in  a  closed  space  and  using  pen,  tongue,  and  eye 
combined,  has  a  tendency  to  overstimulate  the  accessory 
muscles.  This  is  especially  harmful  for  city  children 
who  are  too  prone  to  the  distraction  of  overmobility  at  an 
age  especially  exposed  to  maladjustment  of  motor  in- 
come and  expenditure;  and  it  constitutes  not  a  liberal 
or  power-generating,  but  a  highly  and  prematurely 
specialized,  narrowing,  and  weakening  education  unless 
offset  by  safeguards  better  than  any  system  of  gymnas- 
tics, which  is  at  best  artificial  and  exaggerated. 

As  Bryan  well  says,  "  The  efficiency  of  a  machine 
depends  so  far  as  we  know  upon  the  maximum  force, 
rate,  amplitude,  and  variety  of  direction  of  its  move- 
ments and  upon  the  exactness  with  which  below  these 
maxima  the  force,  rate,  amplitude,  and  direction  of  the 
movements  can  be  controlled."  The  motor  efficiency 
of  a  man  depends  upon  his  ability  in  all  these  respects. 
Moreover,  the  education  of  the  small  muscles  and  fine 
adjustments  of  larger  ones  is  as  near  mental  training  as 
physical  culture  can  get;  for  these  are  the  thought- 
muscles  and  movements,  and  their  perfected  function  is 
to  reflect  and  express  by  slight  modifications  of  tension 
and  tone  every  psychic  change.  Only  the  brain  itself  is 
more  closely  and  immediately  an  organ  of  thought  than 
are  these  muscles  and  their  activity,  reflex,  spontaneous, 
or  imitative  in  origin.  Whether  any  of  them  are  of 
value,  as  Lindley  thinks,  in  arousing  the  brain  to  ac- 
tivity, or,  as  Miiller  suggests,  in  drawing  off  sensations 
3  23 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

or  venting  efferent  impulses  that  would  otherwise  dis- 
tract, we  need  not  here  discuss.  If  so,  this  is,  of  course, 
a  secondary  and  late  function — nature's  way  of  making 
the  best  of  things  and  utilizing  remnants. 

With  these  facts  and  their  implications  in  mind  we 
can  next  pass  to  consider  the  conditions  under  which 
the  adolescent  muscles  best  develop.  Here  we  confront 
one  of  the  greatest  and  most  difficult  problems  of  our 
age.  Changes  in  modern  motor  life  have  been  so  vast 
and  sudden  as  to  present  some  of  the  most  comprehen- 
sive and  all-conditioning  dangers  that  threaten  civilized 
races.  Not  only  have  the  forms  of  labor  been  radically 
changed  within  a  generation  or  two,  but  the  basal  ac- 
tivities that  shaped  the  body  of  primitive  man  have 
been  suddenly  swept  away  by  the  new  methods  of  mod- 
ern industry.  Even  popular  sports,  games,  and  recrea- 
tions, so  abundant  in  the  early  life  of  all  progressive 
peoples,  have  been  reduced  and  transformed;  and  the 
play  age,  that  once  extended  on  to  middle  life  and  often 
old  age,  has  been  restricted.  Sedentary  life  in  schools 
and  offices,  as  we  have  seen,  is  reducing  the  vigor  and 
size  of  our  lower  limbs.  Our  industry  is  no  longer 
imder  hygienic  conditions;  and  instead  of  being  out  of 
doors,  in  the  country,  or  of  highly  diversified  kinds,  it  is 
now  specialized,  monotonous,  carried  on  in  closed  spaces, 
bad  air,  and  perhaps  poor  light,  especially  in  cities.  The 
diseases  and  arrest  bred  in  the  young  by  life  in  shops, 
offices,  factories,  and  schools  increase.  Work  is  rigidly 
bound  to  fixed  hours,  uniform  standards,  stints  and 
piece-products;  and  instead  of  a  finished  article,  each 
individual  now  achieves  a  part  of  a  single  process  and 
knows  little  of  those  that  precede  or  follow.  Machinery 
has  relieved  the  large  basal  muscles  and  laid  more  stress 
upon  fine  and  exact  movements  that  involve  nerve  strain. 

24 


MUSCLES   AND   MOTOR   POWERS   IN   GENERAL 

The  coarser  forms  of  work  that  involve  hard  lifting, 
carrying,  digging,  etc.,  are  themselves  specialized,  and 
skilled  labor  requires  more  and  more  brain-work.  It 
has  been  estimated  that  "  the  diminution  of  manual 
labor  required  to  do  a  given  quantity  of  work  in  1884 
as  compared  with  1870  is  no  less  than  70  per  cent."^ 
Personal  interest  in  and  the  old  native  sense  of  re- 
sponsibility for  results,  ownership  and  use  of  the 
finished  products,  which  have  been  the  inspiration  and 
soul  of  work  in  all  the  past,  are  in  more  and  more  fields 
gone.  Those  who  realize  how  small  a  proportion  of  the 
young  male  population  train  or  even  engage  in  amateur 
sports  w^ith  zest  and  regularity,  how  very  few  and  picked 
men  strive  for  records,  and  how  immediate  and  amazing 
are  the  results  of  judicious  training,  can  best  under- 
stand how  far  below  his  possibilities  as  a  motor  being  the 
average  modern  man  goes  through  life,  and  how  far 
short  in  this  respect  he  falls  from  fulfilling  nature's 
design  for  him. 

For  unnumbered  generations  primitive  man  in  the 
nomad  age  wandered,  made  perhaps  annual  migrations, 
and  bore  heavy  burdens,  while  we  ride  relatively  unen- 
cumbered. He  tilled  the  reluctant  soil,  digging  with 
rude  implements  where  we  use  machines  of  many  man- 
power. In  the  stone,  iron,  and  bronze  age,  he  shaped 
stone  and  metals,  and  wrought  with  infinite  pains  and 
effort,  products  that  we  buy  without  even  knowledge 
of  the  processes  by  which  they  are  made.  As  hunter  he 
followed  game,  which,  when  found,  he  chased,  fought, 
and  overcame  in  a  struggle  perhaps  desperate,  while 
we  shoot  it  at  a  distance  with  little  risk  or  effort.  In 
warfare  he  fought  hand  to  hand  and  eye  to  eye,  while 
we  kill  "  with  as  much  black  powder  as  can  be  put  in 

1  Encycloptedia  of  Social  Reform,  Funk  and  Wagnalls,  1896,  p.  1095. 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

a  woman's  thimble."  He  caught  and  domesticated 
scores  of  species  of  wild  animals  and  taught  them  to 
serve  him;  fished  with  patience  and  skill  that  compen- 
sated his  crude  tools,  weapons,  implements,  and  tackle; 
danced  to  exhaustion  in  the  service  of  his  gods  or  in 
memory  of.  his  forebears,  imitating  every  animal,  re- 
hearsing all  his  own  activities  in  mimic  form  to  the 
point  of  exhaustion,  while  we  move  through  a  few  fig- 
ures in  closed  spaces.  He  dressed  hides,  wove  baskets 
which  we  can  not  reproduce,  and  fabrics  which  we  only 
poorly  imitate  by  machinery,  made  pottery  which  set 
our  fashions,  played  games  that  invigorated  body  and 
soul.  His  courtship  was  with  feats  of  prowess  and 
skill,  and  meant  physical  effort  and  endurance. 

Adolescent  girls,  especially  in  the  middle  classes,  in 
upper  grammar  and  high  school  grades,  during  the 
golden  age  for  nascent  muscular  development,  suffer  per- 
haps most  of  all  in  this  respect.  Grave  as  are  the  evils 
of  child  labor,  I  believe  far  more  pubescents  in  this 
country  now  suffer  from  too  little  than  from  too  much 
physical  exercise,  while  most  who  suffer  from  work  do 
so  because  it  is  too  uniform,  one-sided,  accessory,  or  per- 
formed under  unwholesome  conditions,  and  not  because  it 
is  excessive  in  amount.  Modern  industry  has  thus  largely 
ceased  to  be  a  means  of  physical  development  and  needs 
to  be  offset  by  compensating  modes  of  activity.  Many 
labor-saving  devices  increase  neural  strain,  so  that  one  of 
the  problems  of  our  time  is  how  to  preserve  and  restore 
nerve  energy.  Under  present  industrial  systems  this 
must  grow  worse  and  not  better  in  the  future.  Healthy 
natural  industries  will  be  less  and  less  open  to  the  young. 
This  is  the  new  situation  that  now  confronts  those  con- 
cerned for  motor  education,  if  they  would  only  make 
good  what  is  lost. 

26 


MUSCLES   AND   MOTOR  POWERS   IN   GENERAL 

Some  of  the  results  of  these  conditions  are  seen 
in  average  measurements  of  dimensions,  proportions, 
strength,  skill,  and  control.  Despite  the  excellence  of 
the  few,  the  testimony  of  those  most  familiar  with  the 
bodies  of  children  and  adults,  and  their  physical  powers, 
gives  evidence  of  the  ravages  of  modern  modes  of  life 
that,  without  a  wide-spread  motor  revival,  can  bode  only 
degeneration  for  our  nation  and  our  race.  The  number 
of  common  things  that  can  not  be  done  at  all ;  the  large 
proportion  of  our  youth  who  must  be  exempted  from 
many  kinds  of  activity  or  a  great  amount  of  any,  the 
thin  limbs,  collapsed  shoulders  or  chests,  the  bilateral 
asymmetry,  weak  hearts,  lungs,  eyes,  puny  and  bad 
voices,  muddy  or  pallid  complexions,  tired  ways,  autom- 
atism, dyspeptic  stomachs,  the  effects  of  youthful  error 
or  of  impoverished  heredity,  delicate  and  tender  nur- 
ture, often,  alas,  only  too  necessary,  show  the  lamentable 
and  cumulative  effects  of  long  neglect  of  the  motor 
abilities,  the  most  educable  of  all  man's  powers,  and 
perhaps  the  most  important  for  his  well-being.  If  the 
unfaithful  stewards  of  these  puny  and  shameful  bodies 
had  again,  as  in  Sparta,  to  strip  and  stand  before  stern 
judges  and  render  them  account,  and  be  smitten  with  a 
conviction  of  their  weakness,  guilty  deformity,  and  ar- 
rest of  growth ;  if  they  were  brought  to  realize  how  they 
are  fallen  beings,  as  weak  as  stern  theologians  once 
deemed  them  depraved,  and  how  great  their  need  of 
physical  salvation,  we  might  hope  again  for  a  physical 
renaissance.  Such  a  rebirth  the  world  has  seen  but 
twice  or  perhaps  thrice,  and  each  was  followed  by  the 
two  or  three  of  the  brightest  culture  periods  of  history, 
and  formed  an  epoch  in  the  advancement  of  the  kingdom 
of  man.  A  vast  body  of  evidence  could  be  collected  from 
the  writings  of   anthropologists   showing  how  superior 

27 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

unspoiled  savages  are  to  civilized  man  in  correct  or 
esthetic  proportions  of  body,  in  many  forms  of  endur- 
ance of  fatigue,  hardship,  and  power  to  bear  exposure, 
in  the  development  and  preservation  of  teeth  and  hair, 
in  keenness  of  senses,  absence  of  deformities,  as  Avell  as 
immunity  to  many  of  our  diseases.  Their  women  are 
stronger  and  bear  hardship  and  exposure,  monthly 
periods  and  childbirth,  better.  Civilization  is  so  hard 
on  the  body  that  some  have  called  it  a  disease,  despite 
the  arts  that  keep  puny  bodies  alive  to  a  greater  average 
age,  and  our  greater  protection  from  contagious  and 
germ  diseases. 

The  progressive  realization  of  these  tendencies  has 
prompted  most  of  the  best  recent  and  great  changes 
motor-ward  in  education  and  also  in  personal  regimen. 
Health-  and  strength-giving  agencies  have  put  to  school 
the  large  motor  areas  of  the  brain,  so  long  neglected,  and 
have  vastly  enlarged  their  scope.  Thousands  of  youth 
are  now  inspired  with  new  enthusiasm  for  physical  de- 
velopment; and  new  institutions  of  many  kinds  and 
grades  have  arisen,  with  a  voluminous  literature,  unnum- 
bered specialists,  specialties,  new  apparatus,  tests,  move- 
ments, methods,  and  theories;  and  the  press,  the  public, 
and  the  church  are  awakened  to  a  fresh  interest  in  the 
body  and  its  powers.  All  this  is  magnificent,  but  sadly 
inadequate  to  cope  with  the  new  needs  and  dangers, 
which  are  vastly  greater. 


28 


CHAPTER    III 

INDUSTRIAL    EDUCATION 

Trade  classes  and  schools,  their  importance  in  the  international  market 
— Our  dangers  and  the  superiority  of  German  workmen — The  effects 
of  a  tariff — Description  of  schools  between  the  kindergarten  and  the 
industrial  school — Equal  salaries  for  teachers  in  France — Dangers 
from  machinery — The  advantages  of  life  on  the  old  New  England 
farm — Its  resemblance  to  the  education  we  now  give  negroes  and  In- 
dians— Its  advantage  for  all-sided  muscular  development. 

We  must  glance  at  a  few  of  the  best  and  most  typical 
methods  of  muscular  development,  following  the  order: 
industrial  education,  manual  training,  gymnastics,  and 
play,  sports,  and  games. 

Industrial  education  is  now  imperative  for  every 
nation  that  would  excel  in  agriculture,  manufacture,  and 
trade,  not  only  because  of  the  growing  intensity  of  com- 
petition, but  because  of  the  decline  of  the  apprentice 
system  and  the  growing  intricacy  of  processes,  requir- 
ing only  the  skill  needed  for  livelihood.  Thousands  of 
our  youth  of  late  have  been  diverted  from  secondary 
schools  to  the  monotechnic  or  trade  classes  now  estab- 
lished for  horology,  glass-work,  brick-laying,  carpentry, 
forging,  dressmaking,  cooking,  typesetting,  bookbinding, 
brewing,  seamanship,  work  in  leather,  rubber,  horticul- 
ture, gardening,  photography,  basketry,  stock-raising, 
typewriting,  stenography  and  bookkeeping,  elementary 
commercial  training  for  practical  preparation  for  clerk- 
ships, etc.     In  this  work  not  only  is  Boston,  our  most 

29 


YOUTH :    ITS  EDUCATION    REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

advanced  city,  as  President  Pritchett  ^  has  shown  in 
detail,  far  behind  Berlin,  but  German  workmen  and 
shopmen  are  slowly  taking  the  best  places  even  in 
England ;  and  but  for  a  high  tariff,  which  protects  our  in- 
feriority, the  competitive  pressure  would  be  still  greater. 
In  Germany,  especially,  this  training  is  far  more  diversi- 
fied than  here,  always  being  colored  if  not  determined 
by  the  prevalent  industry  of  the  region  and  more  special- 
ized and  helped  out  by  evening  and  even  Sunday  classes 
in  the  school  buildings,  and  by  the  still  strong  apprentice 
system.  Froebelian  influence  in  manual  training  reaches 
through  the  eight  school  years  and  is  in  some  respects 
better  than  ours  in  lower  grades,  but  is  very  rarely  co- 
educational, girls'  work  of  sewing,  knitting,  crocheting, 
weaving,  etc.,  not  being  considered  manual  training. 
There  are  now  over  1,500  schools  and  workshops  in 
Germany  where  manual  training  is  taught;  twenty-five 
of  these  are  independent  schools.  The  work  really  be- 
gan in  1875  with  v.  Kaas,  and  is  promoted  by  the  great 
Society  for  Boys'  Handwork.  Much  stress  is  laid  on 
paper  and  pasteboard  work  in  lower  grades,  under  the 
influence  of  Kurufa  of  Darmstadt.  Many  objects  for 
illustrating  science  are  made,  and  one  course  embraces 
the  Seyner  water-wheel.^ 

In  France  it  is  made  more  effective  by  the  equal  sal- 
aries of  teachers  everywhere,  thus  securing  better  in- 
struction in  the  country.  Adolescence  is  the  golden 
period  for  acquiring  the  skill  that  comes  by  practice,  so 
essential  in  the  struggle  for  survival.  In  general  this 
kind  of  motor  education  is  least  of  all  free,  but  sub- 


»  The  Place  of  Industrial  and  Technical  Training  in  Public  Education. 
Technology  Review,  January,  1902,  vol.  4,  pp.  10-37. 

2  See  an  article  by  Dr.  H.  E.  Kock,  Education,  December,  1902,  vol. 
23,  pp.  193-203. 

30 


INDUSTRIAL  EDUCATION 

servient  to  the  tool,  machine,  process,  finished  product, 
or  end  in  view ;  and  to  these  health  and  development  are 
subordinated,  so  that  they  tend  to  be  ever  more  narrow 
and  special.  The  standard  here  is  maximal  efficiency  of 
the  capacities  that  earn.  It  may  favor  bad  habitual 
attitudes,  muscular  development  of  but  one  part,  ex- 
cessive large  or  small  muscles,  involve  too  much  time  or 
effort,  unhealthful  conditions,  etc.,  but  it  has  the  great 
advantage  of  utility,  which  is  the  mainspring  of  all  in- 
dustry. In  a  very  few  departments  and  places  this 
training  has  felt  the  influence  of  the  arts  and  crafts 
movement  and  has  been  faintly  touched  with  the  inspira- 
tion of  beauty.  While  such  courses  give  those  who  follow 
them  marked  advantage  over  those  who  do  not,  they  are 
chiefly  utilitarian  and  do  little  to  mature  or  unfold  the 
physical  powers,  and  may  involve  arrest  or  degeneration. 
Where  not  one  but  several  or  many  processes  are 
taught,  the  case  is  far  better.  Of  all  work-schools,  a 
good  farm  is  probably  the  best  for  motor  development. 
This  is  due  to  its  great  variety  of  occupations,  healthful 
conditions,  and  the  incalculable  phyletic  reenforcement 
from  immemorial  times.  I  have  computed  some  three- 
score industries  ^  as  the  census  now  classifies  them,  that 
were  more  or  less  generally  known  and  practiced  sixty 
years  ago  in  a  little  township,  which  not  only  in  this  but 
in  other  respects  has  many  features  of  an  ideal  educa- 
tional environment  for  adolescent  boys,  combining  as  it 
does  not  only  physical  and  industrial,  but  civil  and 
religious  elements  in  wise  proportions  and  with  ped- 
agogic objectivity,  and  representing  the  ideal  of  such  a 
state  of  intelligent  citizen  voters  as  was  contemplated 
by  the  framers  of  our  Constitution. 

1  See  my  Boy  Life  in  a  Massachusetts  Country  Town  Forty  Years  Ago. 
Pedagogical  Seminary,  June,  1906,  vol.  13,  pp.  192-207. 

31 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

Contrast  this  life  with  that  of  a  ''  hand  "  in  a 
modern  shoe  factory,  who  does  all  day  but  one  of  the 
eighty-one  stages  or  processes  from  a  tanned  hide  to  a 
finished  shoe,  or  of  a  man  in  a  shirt-shop  who  is  one  of 
thirty-nine,  each  of  whom  does  as  piece-work  a  single 
step  requiring  great  exactness,  speed,  and  skill,  and 
who  never  knows  how  a  whole  shirt  is  made,  and  we 
shall  see  that  the  present  beginning  of  a  revival  of  inter- 
est in  muscular  development  comes  none  too  early.  So 
liberal  is  muscular  education  of  this  kind  that  its  work 
in  somewhat  primitive  form  has  been  restored  and  copied 
in  many  features  by  many  educational  institutions  for 
adolescents,  of  the  Abbotsholme  type  and  grade,  and 
several  others,  whose  purpose  is  to  train  for  primitive 
conditions  of  colonial  life.  Thousands  of  school  gardens 
have  also  been  lately  developed  for  lower  grades,  which 
have  given  a  new  impetus  to  the  study  of  nature. 
Farm  training  at  its  best  instills  love  of  country,  ruralizes 
taste,  borrows  some  of  its  ideals  from  Goethe's  pedagogic 
province,  and  perhaps  even  from  Oilman's  pie-shaped 
communities,  with  villages  at  the  center  irradiating  to 
farms  in  all  directions.  In  England,  where  by  the  law  of 
primogeniture  holdings  are  large  and  in  few  hands,  this 
training  has  never  flourished,  as  it  has  greatly  in  France, 
where  nearly  every  adult  male  may  own  land  and  a  large 
proportion  will  come  to  do  so.  So  of  processes.  As  a 
student  in  Germany  I  took  a  few  lessons  each  of  a 
bookbinder,  a  glassblower,  a  shoemaker,  a  plumber,  and 
a  blacksmith,  and  here  I  have  learned  in  a  crude  way  the 
technique  of  the  gold-beater  and  old-fashioned  broom- 
maker,  etc.,  none  of  which  come  amiss  in  the  laboratory ; 
and  I  am  proud  that  I  can  still  mow  and  keep  my  scythe 
sharp,  chop,  plow,  milk,  churn,  make  cheese  and  soap, 
braid  a  palm-leaf  hat  complete,  knit,  spin  and  even  "  put 

32 


INDUSTRIAL  EDUCATION 

in  a  piece  "  in  an  old-fashioned  hand  loom,  and  weave 
frocking.  But  this  pride  bows  low  before  the  pupils 
of  our  best  institutions  for  negroes,  Indians,  and  juvenile 
delinquents,  whose  training  is  often  in  more  than  a  score 
of  industries  and  who  to-day  in  my  judgment  receive  the 
t^st  training  in  the  land,  if  judged  by  the  annual  growth 
in  mind,  morals,  health,  physique,  ability,  and  knowl- 
edge, all  taken  together.  Instead  of  seeking  soft,  ready- 
made  places  near  home,  such  education  impels  to  the 
frontier,  to  strike  out  new  careers,  to  start  at  the  bottom 
and  rise  by  merit,  beginning  so  low  that  every  change 
must  be  a  rise.  Wherever  youth  thus  trained  are 
thrown,  they  land  like  a  cat  on  all-fours  and  are  armed 
cap-a-pie  for  the  struggle  of  life.  Agriculture,  manu- 
facture, and  commerce  are  the  bases  of  national  pros- 
perity; and  on  them  all  professions,  institutions,  and 
even  culture,  are  more  and  more  dependent,  while  the 
old  ideals  of  mere  study  and  brain-work  are  fast  becom- 
ing obsolete.  AVe  really  retain  only  the  knowledge  we 
apply.  We  should  get  up  interest  in  new  processes  like 
that  of  a  naturalist  in  new  species.  Those  who  leave 
school  at  any  age  or  stage  should  be  best  fitted  to  take 
up  their  life  work  instead  of  leaving  unfitted  for  it,  aim- 
less and  discouraged.  Instead  of  dropping  out  limp 
and  disheartened,  we  should  train  ''  struggle-for- 
lifeurs,"  in  Daudet's  phrase,  and  that  betimes,  so  that 
the  young  come  back  to  it  not  too  late  for  securing  the 
best  benefits,  after  having  wasted  the  years  best  fitted 
for  it  in  profitless  studies  or  in  the  hard  school  of  fail- 
ure. By  such  methods  many  of  our  flabby,  undeveloped, 
anemic,  easy-living  city  youth  would  be  regenerated  in 
body  and  spirit.  Some  of  the  now  oldest,  richest,  and 
most  famous  schools  of  the  world  were  at  first  established 
by  charity  for  poor  boys  who  Avorked  their  way,  and  such 

33 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

institutions  have  an  undreamed-of  future.  No  others  so 
well  fit  for  a  life  of  respectable  and  successful  muscle 
work,  and  perhaps  this  should  be  central  for  all  at  this 
stage.  This  diversity  of  training  develops  the  muscular 
activities  rendered  necessary  by  man's  early  development, 
which  were  so  largely  concerned  with  food,  shelter,  cloth- 
ing, making  and  selling  commodities  necessary  for  life, 
comfort  and  safety.  The  natural  state  of  man  is  not  war, 
but  peace ;  and  perhaps  Dawson  ^  is  right  in  thinking  that 
three-fourths  of  man 's  physical  activities  in  the  past  have 
gone  into  such  vocations.  Industry  has  determined  the 
nature  and  trend  of  muscular  development ;  and  youth, 
who  have  pets,  till  the  soil,  build,  manufacture,  use  tools, 
and  master  elementary  processes  and  skills,  are  most  truly 
repeating  the  history  of  the  race.  This,  too,  lays  the 
best  foundation  for  intellectual  careers.  The  study  of 
pure  science,  as  well  as  its  higher  technology,  follows 
rather  than  precedes  this.  In  the  largest  sense  this  is 
the  order  of  nature,  from  fundamental  and  generalized 
to  finer  accessory  and  specialized  organs  and  functions; 
and  such  a  sequence  best  weeds  out  and  subordinates 
automatisms.  The  age  of  stress  in  most  of  these  kinds 
of  training  is  that  of  most  rapid  increment  of  muscular 
power,  as  we  have  seen  in  the  middle  and  later  teens 
rather  than  childhood,  as  some  recent  methods  have  mis- 
takenly assumed ;  and  this  prepolytechnic  work,  wherever 
and  in  whatever  degree  it  is  possible,  is  a  better  adjunct 
of  secondary  courses  than  manual  training,  the  sad  fact 
being  that,  according  to  the  best  estimates,  only  a  fraction 
of  one  per  cent  of  those  who  need  this  training  in  this 
country  are  now  receiving  it. 

1  The  Muscular  Activities  Rendered  Necessary  by  Man's  Early 
F.nvironment.  American  Physical  Education  Review,  June,  1902, 
vol.  7,  pp.  80-85. 

34 


CHAPTER   IV 

MANUAL   TRAINING   AND   SLOYD 

History  of  the  movement — Its  philosophy — The  value  of  hand  training 
in  the  development  of  the  brain  and  its  significance  in  the  making  of 
man — A  grammar  of  our  many  industries  hard — The  best  we  do  can 
reach  but  few — Very  great  defects  in  our  manual  training  methods 
which  do  not  base  on  science  and  make  nothing  salable — The  Leipzig 
system — Sloyd  is  hypermethodic — These  crude  peasant  industries 
can  never  satisfy  educational  needs — The  gospel  of  work,  William 
Morris  and  the  arts  and  crafts  movement — Its  spirit  desirable — The 
magic  effects  of  a  brief  period  of  intense  work — The  natural  develop- 
ment of  the  drawing  instinct  in  the  child. 

Manual  trainkig  has  many  origins;  but  in  its  now 
most  widely  accepted  form  it  came  to  us  more  than  a 
generation  ago  from  Moscow,  and  has  its  best  representa- 
tion here  in  our  new  and  often  magnificent  manual- 
training  high  schools  and  in  many  courses  in  other  public 
schools.  This  work  meets  the  growing  demand  of  the 
country  for  a  more  practical  education,  a  demand  which 
often  greatly  exceeds  the  accommodations.  The  philos- 
ophy, if  such  it  may  be  called,  that  underlies  the  move- 
ment, is  simple,  forcible,  and  sound,  and  not  unlike 
Pestalozzi's  '' keine  Kentnisse  ohne  Fertigkeiten," '^  in 
that  it  lessens  the  interval  between  thinking  and  doing; 
helps  to  give  control,  dexterity,  and  skill  an  industrial 
trend  to  taste ;  interests  many  not  successful  in  ordinary 
school;  tends  to  the  better  appreciation  of  good,  honest 
work ;  imparts  new  zest  for  some  studies ;  adds  somewhat 
to  the  average  length  of  the  school  period ;  gives  a  sense 

»  No  knowledge  without  skill. 

35 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

of  capacity  and  effectiveness,  and  is  a  useful  preparation 
for  a  number  of  vocations.  These  claims  are  all  well 
founded,  and  this  work  is  a  valuable  addition  to  the  peda- 
gogic agencies  of  any  country  or  state.  As  man  excels 
the  higher  anthropoids  perhaps  almost  as  much  in  hand 
power  as  in  mind,  and  since  the  manual  areas  of  the  brain 
are  wide  near  the  psychic  zones,  and  the  cortical  centers 
are  thus  directly  developed,  the  hand  is  a  potent  instru- 
ment in  opening  the  intellect  as  well  as  in  training  sense 
and  will.  It  is  no  reproach  to  these  schools  that,  full  as 
they  are,  they  provide  for  but  an  insignificant  fraction  of 
the  nearly  sixteen  millions  or  twenty  per  cent  of  the 
young  people  of  the  country  between  fifteen  and  twenty- 
four. 

When  we  turn  to  the  needs  of  these  pupils,  the  errors 
and  limitations  of  the  method  are  painful  to  contem- 
plate. The  work  is  essentially  manual  and  offers  little 
for  the  legs,  where  most  of  the  muscular  tissues  of  the 
body  lie,  those  which  respond  most  to  training  and  are 
now  most  in  danger  of  degeneration  at  this  age ;  the  back 
and  trunk  also  are  little  trained.  Consideration  of  pro- 
portion and  bilateral  asymmetry  are  practically  ignored. 
Almost  in  proportion  as  these  schools  have  multiplied, 
the  rage  for  uniformity,  together  with  motives  of  econ- 
omy and  administrative  efficiency  on  account  of  over- 
crowding, have  made  them  rigid  and  inflexible,  on  the 
principle  that  as  the  line  lengthens  the  stake  must  be 
strengthened.  This  is  a  double  misfortune;  for  the 
courses  were  not  sufficiently  considered  at  first  and  the 
plastic  stage  of  adaptation  was  too  short,  while  the  meth- 
ods of  industry  have  undergone  vast  changes  since  they 
were  given  shape.  There  are  now  between  three  and 
four  hundred  occupations  in  the  census,  more  than  half 
of  these  involving  manual  work,  so  that  never  perhaps 

36 


MANUAL  TRAINING  AND  SLOYD 

was  there  so  gTeat  a  pedagogic  problem  as  to  make  these 
natural  developments  into  conscious  art,  to  extract  what 
may  be  called  basal  types.  This  requires  an  effort  not 
without  analogy  to  Aristotle's  attempt  to  extract  from 
the  topics  of  the  marketplace  the  underlying  categories 
eternally  conditioning  all  thought,  or  to  construct  a 
grammar  of  speech.  Hardly  an  attempt  worthy  the 
name,  not  even  the  very  inadequate  one  of  a  committee, 
has  been  made  in  this  field  to  study  the  conditions  and  to 
meet  them.  Like  Froebel's  gifts  and  occupations, 
deemed  by  their  author  the  very  roots  of  human  occu- 
pations in  infant  form,  the  processes  selected  are  unde- 
rived  and  find  their  justification  rather  in  their  logical 
sequence  and  coherence  than  in  being  true  norms  of 
work.  If  these  latter  be  attainable  at  all,  it  is  not  likely 
that  they  will  fit  so  snugly  in  a  brief  curriculum,  so  that 
its  simplicity  is  suspicious.  The  wards  of  the  keys  that 
lock  the  secrets  of  nature  and  human  life  are  more  intri- 
cate and  mazy.  As  H.  T.  Bailey  well  puts  it  in  sub- 
stance, a  master  in  any  art-craft  must  have  a  fourfold 
equipment:  1.  Ability  to  grasp  an  idea  and  embody  it. 

2.  Power  to  utilize  all  nerve,  and  a  wide  repertory  of 
methods,    devices,    recipes,    discoveries,    machines,    etc. 

3.  Knowledge  of  the  history  of  the  craft.  4.  Skill  in 
technical  processes.  American  schools  emphasize  chiefly 
only  the  last. 

The  actual  result  is  thus  a  course  rich  in  details 
representing  wood  and  iron  chiefly,  and  mostly  ignoring 
other  materials;  the  part  of  the  course  treating  of  the 
former,  wooden  in  its  teachings  and  distinctly  tending  to 
make  joiners,  carpenters,  and  cabinet-makers ;  that  of  the 
latter,  iron  in  its  rigidity  and  an  excellent  school  for 
smiths,  mechanics,  and  machinists.  These  courses  are  not 
liberal  because  they  hardly  touch  science,  which  is  rap- 

37 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

idly  becoming  the  real  basis  of  every  industry.  Almost 
nothing  that  can  be  called  scientific  knowledge  is  re- 
quired or  even  much  favored,  save  some  geometrical  and 
mechanical  drawing  and  its  implicates.  These  schools 
instinctively  fear  and  repudiate  plain  and  direct  utility, 
or  suspect  its  educational  value  or  repute  in  the  com- 
munity because  of  this  strong  bias  toward  a  few  trades. 
This  tendency  also  they  even  fear,  less  often  because 
unfortunately  trade-unions  in  this  country  sometimes 
jealously  suspect  it  and  might  vote  down  supplies,  than 
because  the  teachers  in  these  schools  were  generally 
trained  in  older  scholastic  and  even  classic  methods  and 
matter.  Industry  is  everywhere  and  always  for  the 
sake  of  the  product,  and  to  cut  loose  from  this  as  if  it 
were  a  contamination  is  a  fatal  mistake.  To  focus  on 
process  only,  with  no  reference  to  the  object  made,  is 
here  an  almost  tragic  case  of  the  sacrifice  of  content  to 
form,  which  in  all  history  has  been  the  chief  stigma  of 
degeneration  in  education.  Man  is  a  tool-using  animal ; 
but  tools  are  always  only  a  means  to  an  end,  the  latter 
prompting  even  their  invention.  Hence  a  course  in  tool 
manipulation  only,  with  persistent  refusal  to  consider 
the  product  lest  features  of  trade-schools  be  introduced, 
has  made  most  of  our  manual-training  high  schools 
ghastly,  hollow,  artificial  institutions.  Instead  of  mak- 
ing in  the  lower  grades  certain  toys  which  are  master- 
pieces of  mechanical  simplification,  as  tops  and  kites, 
and  introducing  such  processes  as  glass-making  and 
photography,  and  in  higher  grades  making  simple 
scientific  apparatus  more  generic  than  machines,  to  open 
the  great  principles  of  the  material  universe,  all  is  sac- 
rificed to  supernormalized  method. 

As  in  all  hypermethodic  schemes,  the  thought  side  is 
feeble.    There  is  no  control  of  the  work  of  these  schools 

38 


MANUAL  TRAINING  AND   SLOYD 

by  the  higher  technical  institutions  such  as  the  college 
exercises  over  the  high  school,  so  that  few  of  them  do 
work  that  fits  for  advanced  training  or  is  thought  best 
by  technical  faculties.  In  most  of  its  current  narrow 
forms,  manual  training  will  prove  to  be  historically,  as 
it  is  educationally,  extemporized  and  tentative,  and  will 
soon  be  superseded  by  broader  methods  and  be  forgotten 
and  obsolete,  or  cited  only  as  a  low  point  of  departure 
from  which  future  progress  will  loom  up. 

Indeed  in  more  progressive  centers,  many  new  de- 
partures are  now  in  the  experimental  stage.  Goetze  at 
Leipzig,  as  a  result  of  long  and  original  studies  and 
trials,  has  developed  courses  in  which  pasteboard  work 
and  modeling  are  made  of  equal  rank  with  wood  and 
iron,  and  he  has  connected  them  even  with  the  kinder- 
garten below.  In  general  the  whole  industrial  life  of 
our  day  is  being  slowly  explored  in  the  quest  of  new 
educational  elements;  and  rubber,  lead,  glass,  textiles, 
metallurgical  operations,  agriculture,  every  tool  and 
many  machines,  etc.,  are  sure  to  contribute  their  choicest 
pedagogical  factors  to  the  final  result.  In  every  detail 
the  prime  consideration  should  be  the  nature  and  needs 
of  the  youthful  body  and  will  at  each  age,  their  hygiene 
and  fullest  development ;  and  next,  the  closest  connection 
with  science  at  every  point  should  do  the  same  for  the 
intellect.  Each  operation  and  each  tool — the  saw,  knife, 
plane,  scrcAv,  hammer,  chisel,  draw-shave,  sandpaper, 
lathe — will  be  studied  with  reference  to  its  orthopedic 
value,  bilateral  asymmetry,  the  muscles  it  develops, 
and  the  attitudes  and  motor  habits  it  favors;  and 
uniformity,  which  in  France  often  requires  classes  to 
saw,  strike,  plane  up,  down,  right,  left,  all  to- 
gether, upon  count  and  command,  will  give  place  to 
individuality. 

4  39 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

Sloyd  has  certain  special  features  and  claims.  The 
word  means  skilful,  deft.  The  movement  was  organized 
in  Sweden  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago  as  an  effort  to 
prevent  the  extinction  by  machinery  of  peasant  home 
industry  during  the  long  winter  night.  Home  sloyd  was 
soon  installed  in  an  institution  of  its  own  for  training 
teachers  at  Naas.  It  works  in  wood  only,  with  little 
machinery,  and  is  best  developed  for  children  of  from 
eleven  to  fifteen.  It  no  longer  aims  to  make  artisans; 
but  its  manipulations  are  meant  to  be  developmental, 
to  teach  both  sexes  not  only  to  be  useful  but  self-active 
and  self-respecting,  and  to  revere  exactness  as  a  form  of 
truthfulness.  It  assumes  that  all  and  especially  the 
motor-minded  can  really  understand  only  what  they 
make,  and  that  one  can  work  like  a  peasant  and  think 
like  a  philosopher.  It  aims  to  produce  wholes  rather 
than  parts  like  the  Russian  system,  and  to  be  so  essen- 
tially educational  that,  as  a  leading  exponent  says,  its 
best  effects  would  be  conserved  if  the  hands  were  cut 
off.  This  change  of  its  original  utilitarianism  from  the 
lower  to  the  liberal  motor  development  of  the  middle 
and  upper  classes  and  from  the  land  where  it  originated 
to  another,  has  not  eliminated  the  dominant  marks  of 
its  origin  in  its  models,  the  Penates  of  the  sloyd  house- 
hold, the  unique  features  of  which  persist  like  a  na- 
tional school  of  art,  despite  transplantation  and  trans- 
formation.^ 

Sloyd  at  its  best  tries  to  correlate  several  series,  viz., 
exercises,  tools,  drawing,  and  models.  Each  must  be 
progressive,  so  that  every  new  step  in  each  series  in- 
volves a  new  and  next  developmental  step   in  all  the 

1  This  I  have  elsewhere  tried  to  show  in  detail.  Criticisms  of  High 
School  Physics  and  Manual  Training  and  Mechanic  Arts  in  High  Schools. 
Pedagogical  Seminary,  June,  1902,  vol.  9,  pp.  193-204, 

40 


MANUAL  TRAINING   AND   SLOYD 

others,  and  all  together,  it  is  claimed,  fit  the  order  and 
degree  of  development  of  each  power  appealed  to  in  the 
child.  Yet  there  has  been  hardly  an  attempt  to  justify 
either  the  physiological  or  the  psychological  reason  of  a 
single  step  in  any  of  these  series,  and  the  coordination 
of  the  series  even  with  each  other,  to  say  nothing  of 
their  adaptation  to  the  stages  of  the  child 's  development. 
This,  if  as  pat  and  complete  as  is  urged,  would  indeed 
constitute  on  the  whole  a  paragon  of  all  the  harmony, 
beauty,  totality  in  variety,  etc.,  which  make  it  so  mag- 
nificent in  the  admirer's  eyes.  But  the  "  45  tools,  72 
exercises,  31  models,  15  of  which  are  joints,"  all  learned 
by  teachers  in  one  school  year  of  daily  work  and  by 
pupils  in  four  years,  are  overmethodic ;  and  such  cor- 
relation is  impossible  in  so  many  series  at  once.  Every 
dual  order,  even  of  work  and  unfoldment  of  powers,  is 
hard  enough,  since  the  fall  lost  us  Eden ;  and  woodwork, 
could  it  be  upon  that  of  the  tree  of  knowledge  itself, 
is  incompatible  wdth  enjoying  its  fruit.  Although  a 
philosopher  may  see  the  whole  universe  in  its  smallest 
part,  all  his  theory  can  not  reproduce  educational  wholes 
from  fragments  of  it.  The  real  merits  of  sloyd  have 
caused  its  enthusiastic  leaders  to  magnify  its  scope  and 
claims  far  beyond  their  modest  bounds;  and  although 
its  field  covers  the  great  transition  from  childhood  to 
youth,  one  searches  in  vain  both  its  literature  and  prac- 
tise for  the  slightest  recognition  of  the  new  motives  and 
methods  that  puberty  suggests.  Especially  in  its  par- 
tially acclimatized  forms  to  American  conditions,  it  is 
all  adult  and  almost  scholastic ;  and  as  the  most  elaborate 
machinery  may  sometimes  be  run  by  a  poor  power-wheel, 
if  the  stream  be  swift  and  copious  enough,  so  the  mighty 
current  that  sets  toward  motor  education  would  give  it 
some  degree  of  success  were  it  worse  and  less  economic 

41 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

of  pedagogic  momentum  than  it  is.  It  holds  singularly- 
aloof  from  other  methods  of  efferent  training  and  re- 
sists coordination  with  them,  and  its  provisions  for  other 
than  hand  development  are  slight.  It  will  be  one  of 
the  last  to  accept  its  true  but  modest  place  as  contribut- 
ing certain  few  but  precious  elements  in  the  greater 
synthesis  that  impends.  Indian  industries,  basketry, 
pottery,  bead,  leather,  bows  and  arrows,  bark,  etc.,  which 
our  civilization  is  making  lost  arts  by  forcing  the  white 
man 's  industries  upon  red  men  at  reservation  schools  and 
elsewhere,  need  only  a  small  part  of  the  systemization 
that  Swedish  peasant  work  has  received  to  develop  even 
greater  educational  values;  and  the  same  is  true  of  the 
indigenous  household  work  of  the  old  New  England 
farm,  the  real  worth  and  possibilities  of  which  are  only 
now,  and  perhaps  too  late,  beginning  to  be  seen  by  a 
few  educators. 

This  brings  us  to  the  arts  and  crafts  movement, 
originating  with  Carlyle's  gospel  of  work  and  Ruskin's 
medievalism,  developed  by  William  Morris  and  his 
disciples  at  the  Red  House,  checked  awhile  by  the  ridi- 
cule of  the  comic  opera  "  Patience,"  and  lately  revived 
in  some  of  its  features  by  Cobden-Sanderson,  and  of  late 
to  some  extent  in  various  centers  in  this  country.  Its 
ideal  was  to  restore  the  day  of  the  seven  ancient  guilds 
and  of  Hans  Sachs,  the  poet  cobbler,  when  conscience 
and  beauty  inspired  work,  and  the  hand  did  what  ma- 
chines only  imitate  and  vulgarize.  In  the  past,  which 
this  school  of  motor  culture  harks  back  to,  work,  for 
which  our  degenerate  age  lacks  even  respect,  Avas  indeed 
praise.  Refined  men  and  women  have  remembered 
these  early  days,  when  their  race  was  in  its  prime,  as 
a  lost  paradise  which  they  would  regain  by  designing 
and  even  weaving  tapestries  and  muslins ;  experimenting 

42 


MANUAL   TRAINING  AND  SLOYD 

in  vats  with  dyes  to  rival  Tyrian  purple;  printing  and 
binding  by  hand  books  that  surpass  the  best  of  the 
Aldines  and  Elzevirs;  carving  in  old  oak;  hammering 
brass;  forging  locks,  irons,  and  candlesticks;  becoming 
artists  in  burned  wood  and  leather;  seeking  old  effects 
of  simplicity  and  solidity  in  furniture  and  decoration, 
as  well  as  in  architecture,  stained  glass,  and  to  some 
extent  in  dress  and  manners;  and  all  this  toil  and  moil 
was  ad  majoreyn  gloriam  hominis  ^  in  a  new  socialistic 
state,  where  the  artist,  and  even  the  artisan,  should 
take  his  rightful  place  above  the  man  who  merely  knows. 
The  day  of  the  mere  professor,  who  deals  in  knowledge, 
is  gone ;  and  the  day  of  the  doer,  who  creates,  has  come. 
The  brain  and  the  hand,  too  long  divorced  and  each  weak 
and  mean  without  the  other;  use  and  beauty,  each  alone 
vulgar ;  letters  and  labor,  each  soulless  without  the  other, 
are  henceforth  to  be  one  and  inseparable ;  and  this  union 
will  lift  man  to  a  higher  level.  The  workman  in  his 
apron  and  paper  hat,  inspired  by  the  new  socialism  and 
the  old  spirit  of  chivalry  as  revived  by  Scott,  revering 
Wagner's  revival  of  the  old  Deutschenthum  that  was 
to  conquer  CJunstenthum,  or  Tennyson's  Arthurian 
cycle — this  was  its  ideal;  even  as  the  Jews  rekindled 
their  loyalty  to  the  ancient  traditions  of  their  race  and 
made  their  Bible  under  Ezra;  as  we  begin  to  revere  the 
day  of  the  farmer-citizen,  who  made  our  institutions,  or 
as  some  of  us  would  revive  his  vanishing  industrial  life 
for  the  red  man. 

Although  this  movement  was  by  older  men  and 
women  and  had  in  it  something  of  the  longing  regret 
of  senescence  for  days  that  are  no  more,  it  shows  us 
the  glory  which  invests  racial  adolescence   when  it  is 


To  the  greater  glory  of  man. 

43 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

recalled  in  maturity,  the  time  when  the  soul  can  best 
appreciate  the  value  of  its  creations  and  its  possibilities, 
and  really  lives  again  in  its  glamour  and  finds  in  it  its 
greatest  inspiration.  Hence  it  has  its  lessons  for  us 
here.  A  touch,  but  not  too  much  of  it,  should  be  felt  in 
all  manual  education,  which  is  just  as  capable  of  ideal- 
ism as  literary  education.  This  gives  soul,  interest,  con- 
tent, beauty,  taste.  If  not  a  polyphrastic  philosophy 
seeking  to  dignify  the  occupation  of  the  workshop  by 
a  pretentious  Volapuk  of  reasons  and  abstract  theories, 
we  have  here  the  pregnant  suggestion  of  a  psychological 
quarry  of  motives  and  spirit  opened  and  ready  to  be 
worked.  Thus  the  best  forces  from  the  past  should  be 
turned  on  to  shape  and  reenforce  the  best  tendencies  of 
the  present.  The  writings  of  the  above  gospelers  of  work 
not  only  could  and  should,  but  will  be  used  to  inspire 
manual-training  high  schools,  sloyd  and  even  some  of 
the  less  scholastic  industrial  courses ;  but  each  is  incom- 
plete without  the  other.  These  books  and  those  that 
breathe  their  spirit  should  be  the  mental  workshop  of  all 
who  do  tool,  lathe,  and  forge  work ;  who  design  and  draw 
patterns,  carve  or  mold;  or  of  those  who  study  how  to 
shape  matter  for  human  uses,  and  whose  aim  is  to  ob- 
tain diplomas  or  certificates  of  fitness  to  teach  all  such 
things.  The  muse  of  art  and  even  of  music  will  have 
some  voice  in  the  great  synthesis  which  is  to  gather  up 
the  scattered,  hence  ineffective,  elements  of  secondary 
motor  training,  in  forms  which  shall  represent  all  the 
needs  of  adolescents  in  the  order  and  proportion  that 
nature  and  growth  stages  indicate,  drawing,  with  this 
end  supreme,  upon  all  the  resources  that  history  and 
reform  offer  to  our  selection.  All  this  can  never  make 
work  become  play.  Indeed  it  will  and  should  make  work 
harder  and  more  unlike  play  and  of  another  genus,  be- 

44 


MANUAL  TRAINING   AND  SLOYD 

cause  the  former  is  thus  given  its  own  proper  soul  and 
leads  its  own  distinct,  but  richer,  and  more  abounding 
life. 

I  must  not  close  this  section  without  brief  mention  of 
two  important  studies  that  have  supplied  each  a  new 
and  important  determination  concerning  laws  of  work 
peculiar  to  adolescence. 

The  main  telegraphic  line  requires  a  speed  of  over 
seventy  letters  per  minute  of  all  whom  they  will  em- 
ploy. As  a  sending  rate  this  is  not  very  difficult  and 
is  often  attained  after  two  months '  practise.  This  stand- 
ard for  a  receiving  rate  is  harder  and  later,  and  inquiry 
at  schools  where  it  is  taught  shows  that  about  seventy- 
five  per  cent  of  those  who  begin  the  study  fail  to  reach 
this  speed  and  so  are  not  employed.  Bryan  and  Harter  ^ 
explained  the  rate  of  improvement  in  both  sending  and 
receiving,  with  results  represented  for  one  typical  sub- 
ject in  the  curve  on  the  following  page. 

From  the  first,  sending  improves  most  rapidly  and 
crosses  the  dead-line  a  few  months  before  the  receiving 
rate,  which  may  fall  short.  Curves  1  and  2  represent  the 
same  student.  I  have  added  line  3  to  illustrate  the 
three-fourths  who  fail.  Receiving  is  far  less  pleasant 
than  sending,  and  years  of  daily  practise  at  ordinary 
rates  will  not  bring  a  man  to  his  maximum  rate;  he 
remains  on  the  low  plateau  with  no  progress  beyond  a 
certain  point.  If  forced  by  stress  of  work,  danger  of 
being  dropped,  or  by  will  power  to  make  a  prolonged 
and  intense  effort,  he  breaks  through  his  hidebound  rate 
and  permanently  attains  a  faster  pace.  This  is  true  at 
each  step,  and  every  advance  seems  to  cost  even  more 

1  Studies  in  the  Physiology  and  Psychology  of  the  Telegraphic 
Language.  Psychological  Review,  January,  1897,  vol.  4,  pp.  27-53, 
and  Julv,  1899,  vol.  6,  pp.  345-375. 

45 


YOUTH  :  ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

intensive  effort  than  the  former  one.  At  length,  for 
those  who  go  on,  the  rate  of  receiving,  which  is  a  more 
complex  process,  exceeds  that  of  sending ;  and  the  curves 
of  the  above  figure  would  cress  if  prolonged.  The  ex- 
pert receives  so  much  faster  than  he  sends  that  abbre- 
viated codes  are  used,  and  he  may  take  eighty  to  eighty- 
five  words  a  minute  on  a  typewriter  in  correct  form. 
The  motor  curve  seems  to  asymptotically   approach   a 


perhaps  physiological  limit,  which  the  receiving  curve 
does  not  suggest.  This  seems  a  special  case  of  a  general 
though  not  yet  explained  law.  In  learning  a  foreign 
language,  speaking  is  first  and  easiest,  and  hearing  takes 
a  late  but  often  sudden  start  to  independence.  Perhaps 
this  holds  of  every  ability.  To  Bryan  this  suggests  as 
a  hierarchy  of  habits,  the  plateau  of  little  or  no  im- 
provement, meaning  that  lower  order  habits  are  ap- 
proaching their  maximum  but  are  not  yet  automatic 
enough  to  leave  the  attention  free  to  attack  higher  order 
habits.     The  second  ascent  from  drudgery  to  freedom, 

46 


MANUAL  TRAINING  AND  SLOYD 

which  comes  through  automatism,  is  often  as  sudden  as 
the  first  ascent.  One  stroke  of  attention  comes  to  do 
what  once  took  many.  To  attain  such  effective  speed  is 
not  dependent  on  reaction  time.  This  shooting  together 
of  units  distinguishes  the  master  from  the  man,  the 
genius  from  the  hack.  In  many,  if  not  all,  skills  where 
expertness  is  sought,  there  is  a  long  discouraging  level, 
and  then  for  the  best  a  sudden  ascent,  as  if  here,  too,  as 
we  have  reason  to  think  in  the  growth  of  both  the  body 
as  a  whole  and  in  that  of  its  parts,  nature  does  make 
leaps  and  attains  her  ends  by  alternate  rests  and  rushes. 
Youth  lives  along  on  a  low  level  of  interest  and  accom- 
plishment and  then  starts  onward,  is  transformed,  con- 
verted; the  hard  becomes  easy;  the  old  life  sinks  to  a 
lower  stratum;  and  a  new  and  higher  order,  perhaps  a 
higher  brain  level  and  functions,  is  evolved.  The 
practical  implication  here  of  the  necessity  of  hard  con- 
centrative  effort  as  a  condition  of  advancement  is  re- 
enforced  by  a  quotation  from  Senator  Stanford  on  the 
effect  of  early  and  rather  intensive  work  at  not  too  long 
periods  in  training  colts  for  racing.  Let-ups  are  espe- 
cially dangerous.  He  says,  "It  is  the  supreme  effort 
that  develops."  This,  I  may  add,  suggests  what  is  de- 
veloped elsewhere,  that  truly  spontaneous  attention  is 
conditioned  by  spontaneous  muscle  tension,  which  is  a 
function  of  growth,  and  that  muscles  are  thus  organs 
of  the  mind;  and  also  that  even  voluntary  attention  is 
motivated  by  the  same  nisus  of  development  even  in  its 
most  adult  form,  and  that  the  products  of  science,  in- 
vention, discovery,  as  well  as  the  association  plexus  of  all 
that  was  originally  determined  in  the  form  of  conscious- 
ness, are  made  by  rhythmic  alternation  of  attack,  as  it 
moves  from  point  to  point  creating  diversions  and  re- 
currence. 

47 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

The  other  study,  although  quite  independent,  is  in 
part  a  special  application  and  illustration  of  the  same 
principle. 

At  the  age  of  four  or  five,  when  they  can  do  little 
more  than  scribble,  children's  chief  interest  in  pictures 
is  as  finished  products;  but  in  the  second  period,  which 
Lange  calls  that  of  artistic  illusion,  the  child  sees  in  his 
own  work  not  merely  what  it  represents,  but  an  image 
of  fancy  back  of  it.  This,  then,  is  the  golden  period  for 
the  development  of  power  to  create  artistically.  The 
child  loves  to  draw  everything  with  the  pleasure  chiefly 
in  the  act,  and  he  cares  little  for  the  finished  picture. 
He  draws  out  of  his  own  head,  and  not  from  copy  before 
his  eye.  Anything  and  everything  is  attempted  in  bold 
lines  in  this  golden  age  of  drawing.  If  he  followed  the 
teacher,  looked  carefully  and  drew  what  he  saw,  he 
would  be  abashed  at  his  production.  Indians,  conflagra- 
tions, games,  brownies,  trains,  pageants,  battles — every- 
thing is  graphically  portrayed ;  but  only  the  little  artist 
himself  sees  the  full  meaning  of  his  lines.  Criticism  or 
drawing  strictly  after  nature  breaks  this  charm,  since 
it  gives  place  to  mechanical  reproduction  in  which  the 
child  has  little  interest.  This  awakens  him  from  his 
dream  to  a  realization  that  he  can  not  draw,  and  from 
ten  to  fifteen  his  power  of  perceiving  things  steadily  in- 
creases and  he  makes  almost  no  progress  in  drawing. 
Adolescence  arouses  the  creative  faculty  and  the  desire 
and  ability  to  draw  are  checked  and  decline  after  thir- 
teen or  fourteen.  The  curve  is  the  plateau  which 
Barnes  has  described.  The  child  has  measured  his  own 
productions  upon  the  object  they  reproduced  and  found 
them  wanting,  is  discouraged  and  dislikes  drawing. 
From  twelve  on,  Barnes  found  drawing  more  and  more 
distasteful;  and  this,  too,  Lukens  found  to  be  the  opin- 

48 


MANUAL  TRAINING  AND  SLOYD 

ion  of  our  art  teachers.  The  pupils  may  draw  very 
properly  and  improve  in  technique,  but  the  interest 
is  gone.  This  is  the  condition  in  which  most  men  re- 
main all  their  lives.  Their  power  to  appreciate  steadily 
increases.  Only  a  few  gifted  adolescents  about  this  age 
begin  to  develop  a  new  zest  in  production,  rivaling  that 
of  the  period  from  five  to  ten,  when  their  satisfaction 
is  again  chiefly  in  creation.  These  are  the  artists  whose 
active  powers  dominate. 

Lukens  ^  finds  in  his  studies  of  drawing,  that  in  what 
he  calls  his  fourth  period  of  artistic  development,  there 
are  those  ''  who  during  adolescence  experience  a  rebirth 
of  creative  power."  Zest  in  creation  then  often  be- 
comes a  stronger  incentive  to  work  than  any  pleasure 
or  profit  to  be  derived  from  the  finished  product,  so 
that  in  this  the  propitious  conditions  of  the  first  golden 
age  of  childhood  are  repeated  and  the  deepest  satisfac- 
tion is  again  found  in  the  work  itself.  At  about  four- 
teen or  fifteen,  which  is  the  transition  period,  nascent 
faculties  sometimes  develop  very  rapidly.  Lukens  ^ 
draws  the  interesting  curve  shown  on  the  following  page. 

The  reciprocity  between  the  power  to  produce  and 
that  to  appreciate,  roughly  represented  in  the  above 
curve,  very  likely  is  true  also  in  the  domain  of  music, 
and  may  be,  perhaps,  a  general  law  of  development. 
Certain  it  is  that  the  adolescent  power  to  apperceive 
and  appreciate  never  so  far  outstrips  his  power  to  pro- 


1  A  Study  of  Children's  Drawings  in  the  Early  Years.  Pedagogical 
Seminary,  October,  1896,  vol.  4,  pp.  79-101.  See  also  Drawing  in  the 
Early  Years.  Proceedings  of  the  National  Educational  Association, 
1899,  pp.  946-953.  Das  Kind  als  Kiinstler,  von  C.  Gotze.  Hamburg, 
1898.  The  Genetic  vs.  the  Logical  Order  in  Drawing,  by  F.  Burk.  Ped- 
agogical Seminary,  September,  1902,  vol.  9,  pp.  296-323. 

2  Die  Entwickelungsstufen  beim  Zeichnen.  Die  Kinderfehler,  Sep- 
tember, 1897,  vol.  2,  pp.  166-179. 

49 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 


duce  or  reproduce  as  about  midway  in  the  teens.  Now 
impressions  sink  deepest.  The  greatest  artists  are 
usually  those  who  paint  later,  when  the  expressive 
powers  are  developed,  what  they  have  felt  most  deeply 
and  known  best  at  this  age,  and  not  those  who  in  the  late 
twenties,  or  still  later,  have  gone  to  new  environments 
and  sought  to  depict  them.  All  young  people  draw  best 
those  objects  they  love  most,  and  their  proficiency  should 


IV^ 

^^<*'''''/ Barnes's  Plateau 

11/^ 

/ 

Lange'sArtij 

>tlc  Illusion 

T^ 

till 

_i — 1 1 — 1 — 1 — J — 1      1      1      1      1      1      1 

3     4      5      6      7      8      9     10    11    12    13    14,    15    16    17    18    19    20 
-^— Motor,  creative  or  prodiTcti've  power. 
Sensory  or  receptive  interest  in  the  finished  product. 


be  some  test  of  the  contents  of  their  minds.  They  must 
put  their  own  consciousness  into  a  picture.  At  the 
dawn  of  this  stage  of  appreciation  the  esthetic  tastes 
should  be  stimulated  by  exposure  to,  and  instructed  in 
feeling  for,  the  subject-matter  of  masterpieces;  and  in- 
struction in  technique,  detail,  criticism,  and  learned 
discrimination  of  schools  of  painting  should  be  given 
intermittently.  Art  should  not  now  be  for  art's  sake, 
but  for  the  sake  of  feeling  and  character,  life,  and  con- 
duct; it  should  be  adjunct  to  morals,  history,  and  lit- 
erature; and  in  all,  edification  should  be  the  goal;  and 

50 


MANUAL  TRAINING  AND  SLOYD 

personal  interest,  and  not  that  of  the  teacher,  should  be 
the  guide.  Insistence  on  production  should  be  eased,  and 
the  receptive  imagination,  now  so  hungry,  should  be  fed 
and  reenforced  by  story  and  all  other  accessories.  By 
such  a  curriculum,  potential  creativeness,  if  it  exists, 
will  surely  be  evoked  in  its  own  good  time.  It  will,  at 
first,  attempt  no  commonplace  drawing-master  themes, 
but  will  essay  the  highest  that  the  imagination  can  bode 
forth.  It  may  be  crude  and  lame  in  execution,  but  it 
will  be  lofty,  perhaps  grand ;  and  if  it  is  original  in  con- 
sciousness, it  will  be  in  effect.  Most  creative  painters 
before  twenty  have  grappled  with  the  greatest  scenes 
in  literature  or  turning  points  in  history,  representa- 
tions of  the  loftiest  truths,  embodiments  of  the  most 
inspiring  ideals.  None  who  deserve  the  name  of  artist 
copy  anything  now,  and  least  of  all  with  objective 
fidelity  to  nature;  and  the  teacher  that  represses  or 
criticizes  this  first  point  of  genius,  or  who  can  not 
pardon  the  grave  faults  of  technique  inevitable  at  this 
age  when  ambition  ought  to  be  too  great  for  power, 
is  not  an  educator  but  a  repressor,  a  pedagogic  Philis- 
tine committing,  like  so  many  of  his  calling  in  other 
fields,  the  unpardonable  sin  against  budding  promise, 
always  at  this  age  so  easily  blighted.  Just  as  the  child 
of  six  or  seven  should  be  encouraged  in  his  strong  in- 
stinct to  draw  the  most  complex  scenes  of  his  daily  life, 
so  now  the  inner  life  should  find  graphic  utterance  in 
all  its  intricacy  up  to  the  full  limit  of  unrepressed 
courage.  For  the  great  majority,  on  the  other  hand, 
who  only  appreciate  and  wall  never  create,  the  mind, 
if  it  have  its  rights,  will  be  stored  with  the  best  images 
and  sentiments  of  art;  for  at  this  time  they  are  best 
remembered  and  sink  deepest  into  heart  and  life.  Now, 
although  the  hand  may  refuse,  the  fancy  paints  the 

51 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIME!^,  AND  HYGIENE 

world  in  brightest  hues  and  fairest  forms;  and  such  an 
opportunity  for  infecting  the  soul  with  vaccine  of 
ideality,  hope,  optimism,  and  courage  in  adversity,  will 
never  come  again.  I  believe  that  in  few  departments 
are  current  educational  theories  and  practises  so  hard  on 
youth  of  superior  gifts,  just  at  the  age  when  all  become 
geniuses  for  a  season,  very  brief  for  most,  prolonged 
for  some,  and  permanent  for  the  best.  We  do  not  know 
how  to  teach  to  see,  hear,  and  feel  when  the  sense  cen- 
ters are  most  indelibly  impressible,  and  to  give  relative 
rest  to  the  hand  during  the  years  when  its  power  of 
accuracy  is  abated  and  when  all  that  is  good  is  idealized 
furthest,  and  confidence  in  ability  to  produce  is  at  its 
lowest  ebb. 

Finally,  our  divorce  between  industrial  and  manual 
training  is  abnormal,  and  higher  technical  education  is 
the  chief  sufferer.  Professor  Thurston,  of  Cornell,  who 
has  lately  returned  from  a  tour  of  inspection  abroad,  re- 
ported that  to  equal  Germany  we  now  need :  "  1.  Twenty 
technical  universities,  having  in  their  schools  of  en- 
gineering 50  instructors  and  500  students  each.  2. 
Two  thousand  technical  high  schools  or  manual-training 
schools,  each  having  not  less  than  200  students  and  10 
instructors."  If  we  have  elementary  trade-schools,  this 
would  mean  technical  high  schools  enough  to  accommo- 
date 700,000  students,  served  by  20,000  teachers.  With 
the  strong  economic  arguments  in  this  direction  we  are 
not  here  concerned ;  but  that  there  are  tendencies  to  unfit 
youth  for  life  by  educational  method  and  matter  shown 
in  strong  relief  from  this  standpoint,  we  shall  point  out 
in  a  later  chapter. 


52 


CHAPTER    V 

GYMNASTICS 

The  storj''  of  Jahn  and  the  Turners — The  enthusiasm  which  this  move- 
ment generated  in  Germany — The  ideal  of  bringing  out  latent  powers 
— The  concept  of  more  perfect  voluntary  control — Swedish  gymnastics 
— Doing  everything  possible  for  the  body  as  a  machine — Liberal  phy- 
sical culture — Ling's  orthogenic  scheme  of  economic  postures  and 
movements  and  correcting  defects — The  ideal  of  symmetry  and  pre- 
scribing exercises  to  bring  the  body  to  a  standard — Lamentable  lack 
of  correlation  between  these  four  systems — Illustrations  of  the  great 
good  that  a  systematic  training  can  effect — Athletic  records — Greek 
physical  training. 

Under  the  term  gymnastics,  literally  naked  exercises, 
we  here  include  those  denuded  of  all  utilities  or  ulterior 
ends  save  those  of  physical  culture.  This  is  essentially 
modern  and  was  unlmown  in  antiquity,  where  training 
was  for  games,  for  war,  etc.  Several  ideals  underlie 
this  movement,  which  although  closely  related  are  dis- 
tinct and  as  yet  by  no  means  entirely  harmonized.  These 
may  be  described  as  follows : 

A.  One  aim  of  Jahn,  more  developed  by  Spiess,  and 
their  successors,  was  to  do  everything  physically  pos- 
sible for  the  body  as  a  mechanism.  IMany  postures  and 
attitudes  are  assumed  and  many  movements  made  that 
are  never  called  for  in  life.  Some  of  these  are  so  novel 
that  a  great  variety  of  new  apparatus  had  to  be  de- 
vised to  bring  them  out;  and  Jahn  invented  many  new 
names,  some  of  them  without  etymologies,  to  designate 
the  repertory  of  his  discoveries  and  inventions  that  ex- 
tended the  range  of  motor  life.     Common  movements, 

53 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

industries,  and  even  games,  train  only  a  limited  number 
of  muscles,  activities,  and  coordinations,  and  leave  more 
or  less  unused  groups  and  combinations,  so  that  many 
latent  possibilities  slumber,  and  powers  slowly  lapse 
through  disuse.  Not  only  must  these  be  rescued,  but 
the  new  nascent  possibilities  of  modern  progressive  man 
must  be  addressed  and  developed.  Even  the  com- 
mon things  that  the  average  untrained  youth  can  not 
do  are  legion,  and  each  of  these  should  be  a  new  incen- 
tive to  the  trainer  as  he  realizes  how  very  far  below 
their  motor  possibilities  most  men  live.  The  man  of 
the  future  may,  and  even  must,  do  things  impossible  in 
the  past  and  acquire  new  motor  variations  not  given  by 
heredity.  Our  somatic  frame  and  its  powers  must 
therefore  be  carefully  studied,  inventoried,  and  as- 
sessed afresh,  and  a  kind  and  amount  of  exercise  re- 
quired that  is  exactly  proportioned,  not  perhaps  to  the 
size  but  to  the  capability  of  each  voluntary  muscle.  Thus 
only  can  we  have  a  truly  humanistic  physical  develop- 
ment, analogous  to  the  training  of  all  the  powers  of  the 
mind  in  a  broad,  truly  liberal,  and  non-professional  or 
non-vocational  educational  curriculum.  The  body  will 
thus  have  its  rightful  share  in  the  pedagogic  traditions 
and  inspirations  of  the  renaissance.  Thus  only  can  we 
have  a  true  scale  of  standardized  culture  values  for 
efferent  processes;  and  from  this  we  can  measure  the 
degrees  of  departure,  both  in  the  direction  of  excess  and 
defect,  of  each  form  of  work,  motor  habit,  and  even 
play.  Many  modern  Epigoni  in  the  wake  of  this  great 
ideal,  where  its  momentum  was  nearly  spent,  feeling 
that  new  activities  might  be  discovered  with  virtues 
hitherto  undreamed  of,  have  almost  made  fetiches  of 
special  disciplines,  both  developmental  and  corrective, 
that   are   pictured    and   lauded    in   scores   of   manuals. 

54 


GYMNASTICS 

Others  have  had  expectations  no  less  excessive  in  the 
opposite  direction  and  have  argued  that  the  greatest 
possible  variety  of  movements  best  developed  the  great- 
est total  of  motor  energy.  Jahn  especially  thus  made 
gjrmnastics  a  special  art  and  inspired  great  enthusiasm 
of  humanity,  and  the  songs  of  his  pupils  were  of  a 
better  race  of  man  and  a  greater  and  united  fatherland. 
It  was  this  feature  that  made  his  work  unique  in  the 
world,  and  his  disciples  are  fond  of  reminding  us  of  the 
fact  that  it  was  just  about  one  generation  of  men  after 
the  acme  of  influence  of  his  system  that,  in  1870,  Ger- 
many showed  herself  the  greatest  military  power  since 
ancient  Rome,  and  took  the  acknowledged  leadership  of 
the  world  both  in  education  and  science. 

These  theorizations  even  in  their  extreme  forms  have 
been  not  only  highly  suggestive  but  have  brought  great 
and  new  enthusiasms  and  ideals  into  the  educational 
world  that  admirably  fit  adolescence.  The  motive  of 
bringing  out  latent,  decaying,  or  even  new  powers, 
skills,  knacks,  and  feats,  is  full  of  inspiration.  Patriot- 
ism is  aroused,  for  thus  the  country  can  be  better  served ; 
thus  the  German  Fatherland  was  to  be  restored  and 
unified  after  the  dark  days  that  followed  the  humilia- 
tion of  Jena.  Now  the  ideals  of  religion  are  invoked 
that  the  soul  may  have  a  better  and  regenerated  somatic 
organism  with  which  to  serve  Jesus  and  the  Church. 
Exercise  is  made  a  form  of  praise  to  God  and  of  ser- 
vice to  man,  and  these  motives  are  reenforced  by  those 
of  the  new  hygiene  which  strives  for  a  new  wholeness- 
holiness,  and  would  purify  the  body  as  the  temple  of 
the  Holy  Ghost.  Thus  in  Young  Men's  Christian  Asso- 
ciation training  schools  and  gymnasiums  the  gospel  of 
Christianity  is  preached  anew  and  seeks  to  bring  sal- 
vation to  man's  physical  frame,  which  the  still  linger- 
5  55 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

ing  effects  of  asceticism  have  caused  to  be  too  long  neg- 
lected in  its  progressive  degeneration.  As  the  Greek 
games  were  in  honor  of  the  gods,  so  now  the  body  is 
trained  to  better  glorify  God;  and  regimen,  chastity, 
and  temperance  are  given  a  new  momentum.  The 
physical  salvation  thus  wrought  will  be,  when  ade- 
quately written,  one  of  the  most  splendid  chapters  in  the 
modern  history  of  Christianity.  Military  ideals  have 
been  revived  in  cult  and  song  to  hearten  the  warfare 
against  evil  within  and  without.  Strength  is  prayed 
for  as  well  as  worked  for,  and  consecrated  to  the 
highest  uses.  Last  but  not  least,  power  thus  developed 
over  a  large  surface  may  be  applied  to  athletic  con- 
tests in  the  field,  and  victories  here  are  valuable  as  fore- 
gleams  of  how  sweet  the  glory  of  achievements  in  higher 
moral  and  spiritual  tasks  will  taste  later. 

The  dangers  and  sources  of  error  in  this  ideal  of  all- 
sided  training  are,  alas,  only  too  obvious,  although  they 
only  qualify  its  paramount  good.  First,  it  is  impossible 
thus  to  measure  the  quanta  of  training  needed  so  as 
rightly  to  assign  to  each  its  modicum  and  best  modality 
of  training.  Indeed  no  method  of  doing  this  has  ever 
been  attempted,  but  the  assessments  have  been  arbitrary 
and  conjectural,  probably  right  in  some  and  wrong  in 
other  respects,  with  no  adequate  criterion  or  test  for 
either  save  only  empirical  experience.  Secondly,  hered- 
ity, which  lays  its  heavy  ictus  upon  some  neglected 
forms  of  activity  and  fails  of  all  support  for  others, 
has  been  ignored.  As  we  shall  see  later,  one  of  the 
best  norms  here  is  phyletic  emphasis,  and  what  lacks 
this  must  at  best  be  feeble;  and  if  new  powers  are  un- 
folding, their  growth  must  be  very  slow  and  they  must 
be  nurtured  as  tender  buds  for  generations.  Thirdly, 
too  little  regard  is  had  for  the  vast  differences  in  in- 

56 


GYMNASTICS 

dividuals,    most    of    whom    need    much    personal    pre- 
scription. 

B.  In  practise  the  above  ideal  is  never  isolated  from 
others.  Perhaps  the  most  closely  associated  with  it  is 
that  of  increased  volitional  control.  Man  is  largely  a 
creature  of  habit,  and  many  of  his  activities  are  more 
or  less  automatic  reflexes  from  the  stimuli  of  his  environ- 
ment. Every  new  power  of  controlling  these  by  the  will 
frees  man  from  slavery  and  widens  the  field  of  freedom. 
To  acquire  the  power  of  doing  all  with  consciousness  and 
volition  mentalizes  the  body,  gives  control  over  to  higher 
brain  levels,  and  develops  them  by  rescuing  activities 
from  the  dominance  of  lower  centers.  Thus  mens  agi- 
tat  molem}  This  end  is  favored  by  the  Swedish 
commando  exercises,  which  require  great  alertness  of 
attention  to  translate  instantly  a  verbal  order  into  an 
act  and  also,  although  in  somewhat  less  degree,  by  quick 
imitation  of  a  leader.  The  stimulus  of  music  and  rhythm 
are  excluded  because  thought  to  interfere  with  this 
end.  A  somewhat  sophisticated  form  of  this  goal  is 
sought  by  several  Delsartian  schemes  of  relaxation,  de- 
composition, and  recomposition  of  movements.  To  do 
all  things  with  consciousness  and  to  encroach  on  the  field 
of  instinct  involves  new  and  more  vivid  sense  impres- 
sions, the  range  of  which  is  increased  directly  as  that 
of  motion,  the  more  closely  it  approaches  the  focus  of 
attention.  By  thus  analyzing  settled  and  established 
coordinations,  their  elements  are  set  free  and  may  be 
organized  into  new  combinations,  so  that  the  former  is 
the  first  stage  toward  becoming  a  virtuoso  with  new 
special  skills.  This  is  the  road  to  inner  secrets  or  in- 
tellectual rules  of  professional  and  expert  successes,  such 

1  Mind  rules  the  bod3^ 

57 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

as  older  athletes  often  rely  upon  when  their  strength  be- 
gins to  wane.  Every  untrained  automatism  must  be 
domesticated,  and  every  striated  muscle  capable  of 
direct  muscular  control  must  be  dominated  by  volition. 
Thus  tensions  and  incipient  contractures  that  drain  off 
energy  can  be  relaxed  by  fiat.  Sandow's  "  muscle 
dance,"  the  differentiation  of  movements  of  the  right 
and  left  hand — one,  e.  g.,  writing  a  French  madrigal 
while  the  other  is  drawing  a  picture  of  a  country  dance, 
or  each  playing  tunes  of  disparate  rhythm  and  char- 
acter simultaneously  on  the  piano — controlling  heart 
rate,  moving  the  ears,  crying,  laughing,  blushing,  mov- 
ing the  bowels,  etc.,  at  will,  feats  of  inhibition  of  re- 
flexes, stunts  of  all  kinds,  proficiency  with  many  tools, 
deftness  in  sports — these  altogether  would  mark  the 
extremes  in  this  direction. 

This,  too,  has  its  inspiration  for  youth.  To  be  a 
universal  adept  like  Hippias  suggests  Diderot  and  the 
encyclopedists  in  the  intellectual  realm.  To  do  all  with 
consciousness  is  a  means  to  both  remedial  and  expert 
ends.  Motor  life  often  needs  to  be  made  over  to  a 
greater  or  less  extent;  and  that  possibilities  of  vastly 
greater  accomplishments  exist  than  are  at  present  real- 
ized, is  undoubted,  even  in  manners  and  morals,  which 
are  both  at  root  only  motor  habits.  Indeed  consciousness 
itself  is  largely  and  perhaps  wholly  corrective  in  its  very 
essence  and  origin.  Thus  life  is  adjusted  to  new  en- 
vironments; and  if  the  Platonic  postulate  be  correct, 
that  untaught  virtues  that  come  by  nature  and  instinct 
are  no  virtues,  but  must  be  made  products  of  reflection 
and  reason,  the  sphere  and  need  of  this  principle  is 
great  indeed.  But  this  implies  a  distrust  of  physical 
human  nature  as  deep-seated  and  radical  as  that  of  Cal- 
vinism for  the  unregenerate  heart,  against  which  mod- 

58 


GYMNASTICS 

ern  common  sense,  so  often  the  best  muse  of  both  psycho- 
physics  and  pedagogy,  protests.  Individual  prescription 
is  here  as  imperative  as  it  is  difficult.  Wonders  that  now 
seem  to  be  most  incredible,  both  of  hurt  and  help,  can 
undoubtedly  be  wrought,  but  analysis  should  always  be 
for  the  sake  of  synthesis  and  never  be  beyond  its  need 
and  assured  completion.  No  thoughtful  student  fully 
informed  of  the  facts  and  tentatives  in  this  field  can 
doubt  that  here  lies  one  of  the  most  promising  fields  of 
future  development,  full  of  far-reaching  and  rich  re- 
sults for  those,  as  yet  far  too  few,  experts  in  physical 
training,  Avho  have  philosophic  minds,  command  the 
facts  of  modern  psychology,  and  whom  the  world  awaits 
now  as  never  before. 

C.  Another  yet  closely  correlated  ideal  is  that  of 
economic  postures  and  movements.  The  system  of  Ling 
is  less  orthopedic  than  orthogenic,  although  he  sought 
primarily  to  correct  bad  attitudes  and  perverted  growth. 
Starting  from  the  respiratory  and  proceeding  to  the 
muscular  system,  he  and  his  immediate  pupils  were  con- 
tent to  refer  to  the  ill-shapen  bodies  of  most  men  about 
them.  One  of  their  important  aims  was  to  relax  the  flexor 
and  tone  up  the  extensor  muscles  and  to  open  the  human 
form  into  postures  as  opposite  as  possible  to  those  of  the 
embryo,  which  it  tends  so  persistently  to  approximate 
in  sitting,  and  in  fatigue  and  collapse  attitudes  gener- 
ally. The  head  must  balance  on  the  cervical  vertebras 
and  not  call  upon  the  muscles  of  the  neck  to  keep  it 
from  rolling  ofi";  the  weight  of  the  shoulders  must  be 
thrown  back  off  the  thorax;  the  spine  be  erect  to  allow 
the  abdomen  free  action;  the  joints  of  the  thigh  ex- 
tended; the  hand  and  arm  supinated,  etc.  Bones  must 
relieve  muscles  and  nerves.  Thus  an  erect,  self-respect- 
ing carriage  must  be  given,  and  the  unfortunate  associa- 

59 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

tion,  so  difficult  to  overcome,  between  effort  and  an 
involuted  posture  must  be  broken  up.  This  means 
economy  and  a  great  saving  of  vital  energy.  Extensor 
action  goes  with  expansive,  flexor  with  depressive  states 
of  mind;  hence  courage,  buoyancy,  hope,  are  favored 
and  handicaps  removed.  All  that  is  done  with  great 
effort  causes  wide  irradiation  of  tensions  to  the  other 
half  of  the  body  and  also  sympathetic  activities  in  those 
not  involved;  the  law  of  maximal  ease  and  minimal  ex- 
penditure of  energy  must  be  always  striven  for,  and 
the  interests  of  the  viscera  never  lost  sight  of.  This 
involves  educating  weak  and  neglected  muscles,  and  like 
the  next  ideal,  often  shades  over  by  almost  imperceptible 
gradation  into  the  passive  movements  by  the  Zander 
machines.  Realizing  that  certain  activities  are  suffi- 
ciently or  too  much  emphasized  in  ordinary  life,  stress 
is  laid  upon  those  which  are  complemental  to  them,  so 
that  there  is  no  pretense  of  taking  charge  of  the  totality 
of  motor  processes,  the  intention  being  principally  to 
supplement  deficiencies,  to  insure  men  against  being 
warped,  distorted,  or  deformed  by  their  work  in  life, 
to  compensate  specialties  and  perform  more  exactly  what 
recreation  to  some  extent  aims  at. 

This  w^holesome  but  less  inspiring  endeavor,  which 
combats  one  of  the  greatest  evils  that  under  modern 
civilization  threatens  man's  physical  weal,  is  in  some 
respects  as  easy  and  practical  as  it  is  useful.  The  great 
majority  of  city  bred  men,  as  well  as  all  students,  are 
prone  to  deleterious  effects  from  too  much  sitting;  and 
indeed  there  is  anatomical  evidence  in  the  structure  of 
the  tissues,  and  especially  the  blood-vessels  of  the  groins, 
that,  at  his  best,  man  is  not  yet  entirely  adjusted  to  the 
upright  position.  So  a  method  that  straightens  knees, 
hips,  spine,  and  shoulders,  or  combats  the  school-desk 

60 


GY^IN.^STICS 

attitude,  is  a  most  salutary  contribution  to  a  great  and 
growing  need.  In  the  very  act  of  stretching,  and  per- 
haps yawning,  for  which  much  is  to  be  said,  nature  itself 
suggests  such  correctives  and  preventives.  To  save  men 
from  being  victims  of  their  occupations  is  often  to  add 
a  better  and  larger  half  to  their  motor  development. 
The  danger  of  the  system,  which  now  best  represents 
this  ideal,  is  inflexibility  and  overscholastic  treatment. 
It  needs  a  great  range  of  individual  variations  if  it 
would  do  more  than  increase  circulation,  respiration, 
and  health,  or  the  normal  functions  of  internal  organs 
and  fundamental  physiological  activities.  To  clothe  the 
frame  with  honest  muscles  that  are  faithful  servants 
of  the  will  adds  not  only  strength,  more  active  habits 
and  efficiency,  but  health;  and  in  its  material  installa- 
tion this  system  is  financially  economic.  Personal  faults 
and  shortcomings  are  constantly  pointed  out  where  this 
work  is  best  represented,  and  it  has  a  distinct  advantage 
in  inciting  an  acquaintance  with  physiology  and  invit- 
ing the  larger  fields  of  medical  knowledge. 

D.  The  fourth  g3^mnastic  aim  is  symmetry  and  cor- 
rect proportions.  Anthropometry  and  average  girths 
and  dimensions,  strength,  etc.,  of  the  parts  of  the  body 
are  first  charted  in  percentile  grades ;  and  each  individual 
is  referred  to  the  apparatus  and  exercises  best  fitted  to 
correct  weaknesses  and  subnormalities.  The  norms  here 
followed  are  not  the  canons  of .  Greek  art,  but  those 
established  by  the  measurement  of  the  largest  numbers 
properly  grouped  by  age,  weight,  height,  etc.  Young 
men  are  foimd  to  differ  very  widely.  Some  can  lift 
1,000  pounds,  and  some  not  100;  some  can  lift  their 
weight  between  twenty  and  forty  times,  and  some  not 
once;  some  are  most  deficient  in  legs,  others  in  shoul- 
ders, arms^  backs^  chests.     By  photography,  tape,  and 

61 


YOUTH  :  ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

scales,  each  is  interested  in  his  own  bodily  condition  and 
incited  to  overcome  his  greatest  defects;  and  those  best 
endowed  by  nature  to  attain  ideal  dimensions  and  make 
new  records  are  encouraged  along  these  lines.  Thus  this 
ideal  is  also  largely  though  not  exclusively  remedial. 

This  system  can  arouse  youth  to  the  greatest  pitch 
of  zest  in  watching  their  own  rapidly  multiplying  curves 
of  growth  in  dimensions  and  capacities,  in  plotting 
curves  that  record  their  own  increment  in  girths,  lifts, 
and  other  tests,  and  in  observing  the  effects  of  sleep, 
food,  correct  and  incorrect  living  upon  a  system  so  ex- 
quisitely responsive  to  all  these  influences  as  are  the  mus- 
cles. To  learn  to  know  and  grade  excellence  and  defect, 
to  be  known  for  the  list  of  things  one  can  do  and  to  have 
a  record,  or  to  realize  what  we  lack  of  powder  to  break 
best  records,  even  to  know  that  w^e  are  strengthening 
some  point  where  heredity  has  left  us  wdth  some  short- 
age and  perhaps  danger,  the  realization  of  all  this  may 
bring  the  first  real  and  deep  feeling  for  growth  that  may 
become  a  passion  later  in  things  of  the  soul.  Growth 
always  has  its  selfish  aspects,  and  to  be  constantly  pass- 
ing our  own  examination  in  this  respect  is  a  new  and 
perhaps  sometimes  too  self-conscious  endeavor  of  our 
young  college  barbarians;  but  it  is  on  the  whole  a 
healthful  regulative,  and  this  form  of  the  struggle  to- 
ward perfection  and  escape  from  the  handicap  of  birth 
will  later  move  upward  to  the  intellectual  and  moral 
plane.  To  kindle  a  sense  of  physical  beauty  of  form 
in  every  part,  such  as  a  sculptor  has,  may  be  to  start 
youth  on  the  lowest  round  of  the  Platonic  ladder  that 
leads  up  to  the  vision  of  ideal  beauty  of  soul,  if  his 
ideal  be  not  excess  of  brawn,  or  mere  brute  strength, 
but  the  true  proportion  rei)resented  by  the  classic  or 
mean  temperance  balanced  like  justice  between  all  ex- 

G2 


GYMNASTICS 

tremes.  Hard,  patient,  regular  Avork,  with  the  right 
dosage  for  this  self-cultural  end,  has  thus  at  the  same 
time  a  unique  moral  effect. 

The  dangers  of  this  system  are  also  obvious.  Na- 
ture's intent  can  not  be  too  far  thwarted;  and  as  in 
mental  training  the  question  is  alwaj^s  pertinent,  so  here 
we  may  ask  whether  it  be  not  best  in  all  cases  to  some 
extent,  and  in  some  cases  almost  exclusively,  to  develop 
in  the  direction  in  which  we  most  excel,  to  emphasize 
physical  individuality  and  even  idiosyncrasy,  rather 
than  to  strive  for  monotonous  uniformity.  "Weaknesses 
and  parts  that  lag  behind  are  the  most  easily  overworked 
to  the  point  of  reaction  and  perhaps  permanent  injury. 
Again,  work  for  curative  purposes  lacks  the  exuberance 
of  free  sports:  it  is  not  inspiring  to  make  up  areas; 
and  therapeutic  exercises  imposed  like  a  sentence  for 
the  shortcomings  of  our  forebears  bring  a  whiff  of  the 
atmosphere  of  the  hospital,  if  not  of  the  prison,  into 
the  gymnasium. 

These  four  ideals,  while  so  closely  interrelated,  are  as 
yet  far  from  harmonized.  Swedish,  Turner,  Sargent, 
and  American  systems  are  each,  most  unfortunately,  still 
too  blind  to  the  others'  merits  and  too  conscious  of 
the  others'  shortcomings.  To  some  extent  they  are  pre- 
vented from  getting  together  by  narrow  devotion  to  a 
single  cult,  aided  sometimes  by  a  pecuniary  interest  in 
the  sale  of  their  own  apparatus  and  books  or  in  the  train- 
ing of  teachers  according  to  one  set  of  rubrics.  The 
real  elephant  is  neither  a  fan,  a  rope,  a  tree  nor  a  log, 
as  the  blind  men  in  the  fable  contended,  each  thinking 
the  part  he  had  touched  to  be  the  whole.  This  inability 
of  leaders  to  combine  causes  uncertainty  and  lack  of 
confidence  in,  and  of  enthusiastic  support  for,  any  system 
on  the  part  of  the  public.     Even  the  radically  different 

63 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

needs  of  the  sexes  have  failed  of  recognition  from  the 
same  partizanship.  All  together  represent  only  a  frac- 
tion of  the  nature  and  needs  of  youth.  The  world  now 
demands  what  this  country  has  never  had,  a  man  who, 
knowing  the  human  body,  gymnastic  history,  and  the 
various  great  athletic  traditions  of  the  past,  shall  study 
anew  the  whole  motor  field,  as  a  few  great  leaders  early 
in  the  last  century  tried  to  do ;  who  shall  gather  and  cor- 
relate the  literature  and  experiences  of  the  past  and  pres- 
ent with  a  deep  sense  of  responsibility  to  the  future; 
who  shall  examine  martial  training  with  all  the  in- 
spirations, warnings,  and  new  demands;  and  who  shall 
know  how  to  revive  the  inspiration  of  the  past  animated 
by  the  same  spirit  as  the  Turners,  who  w^re  almost  in- 
flamed by  referring  back  to  the  hardy  life  of  the  early 
Teutons  and  trying  to  reproduce  its  best  features;  who 
shall  catch  the  spirit  of,  and  make  due  connections  with, 
popular  sports  past  and  present,  study  both  industry 
and  education  to  compensate  their  debilitating  effects, 
and  be  himself  animated  by  a  great  ethical  and  human- 
istic hope  and  faith  in  a  better  future.  Such  a  man,  if 
he  ever  walks  the  earth,  will  be  the  idol  of  youth,  will 
know  their  physical  secrets,  will  come  almost  as  a  savior 
to  the  bodies  of  men,  and  will,  like  Jahn,  feel  his  calling 
and  work  sacred,  and  his  institution  a  temple  in  which 
every  physical  act  will  be  for  the  sake  of  the  soul.  The 
world  of  adolescence,  especially  that  part  which  sits  in 
closed  spaces  conning  books,  groans  and  travails  all  the 
more  grievously  and  yearningly,  because  unconsciously, 
Avaiting  for  a  redeemer  for  its  body.  Till  he  appears,  our 
culture  must  remain  for  most  a  little  hollow,  falsetto, 
and  handicapped  by  school-bred  diseases.  The  modern 
gymnasium  performs  its  chief  service  during  adoles- 
cence and  is  one  of  the  most  beneficent  agencies  of  which 

64 


GYMNASTICS 


not  a  few,  but  every  youth,  should  make  large  use.  Its 
spirit  should  be  instinct  with  euphoria,  where  the  joy  of 
being  alive  reaches  a  point  of  high,  although  not  quite  its 
highest,  intensity.  While  the  stimulus  of  rivalry  and 
even  of  records  is  not  excluded,  and  social  feelings  may 
be  appealed  to  by  unison  exercises  and  by  the  club  spirit, 
and  while  competitions,  tournaments,  and  the  artificial 
motives  of  prizes  and  exhibitions  may  be  invoked,  the 
culture  is  in  fact  largely  individual.  And  yet  in  this 
country  the  annual  Turnerfest  brings  4,000  or  5,000  men 
from  all  parts  of  the  Union,  who  sometimes  all  deploy 
and  go  through  some  of  the  standard  exercises  together 
under  one  leader.  Instead  of  training  a  few  athletes, 
the  real  problem  now  presented  is  how  to  raise  the  gen- 
eral level  of  vitality  so  that  children  and  youth  may  be 
fitted  to  stand  the  strain  of  modern  civilization,  resist 
zymotic  diseases,  and  overcome  the  deleterious  influ- 
ences of  city  life.  The  almost  immediate  effects  of  sys- 
tematic training  are  surprising  and  w^ould  hardly  be 
inferred  from  the  annual  increments  tabled  earlier  in 
this  chapter.  SandoAV  was  a  rather  weakly  boy  and 
ascribes  his  development  chiefly  to  systematic  training. 
We  have  space  but  for  two  reports  believed  to  be 
typical.  Enebuske  reports  on  the  effects  of  seven 
months'  training  on  young  women  averaging  22.3  years. 
The  figures  are  based  on  the  50  percentile  column. 


Before  training. . 
After  six  montha , 


c  " 

II 

P 

co'o 

2.65 

2.87 

93 
120 

65.5 
81.5 

27 
32 

26 

28 

23 
25 

230 
293 


By  comparing  records  of  what  he  deems  standard 
normal  growth  with  that  of  188  naval  cadets  from  six- 

65 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

teen  to  twenty-one,  who  had  special  and  systematic  train- 
ing, just  after  the  period  of  most  rapid  growth  in  height, 
Beyer  concluded  that  the  effect  of  four  years  of  this 
added  a  little  over  an  inch  of  stature,  and  that  this  gain 
was  greatest  at  the  beginning.  This  increase  was  great- 
est for  the  youngest  cadets.  He  found  also  a  marked 
increase  in  weight,  nearly  the  same  for  each  year  from 
seventeen  to  twenty-one.  This  he  thought  more  easily 
influenced  by  exercise  than  height.  A  high  vital  index 
or  ratio  of  lung  capacity  to  weight  is  a  very  important 
attribute  of  good  training.  Beyer  ^  found,  however,  that 
the  addition  of  lung  area  gained  by  exercise  did  not  keep 
up  with  the  increase  thus  caused  in  muscular  substance, 
and  that  the  vital  index  always  became  smaller  in  those 
who  had  gained  weight  and  strength  by  special  physical 
training.  How  much  gain  in  weight  is  desirable  beyond 
the  point  where  the  lung  capacity  increases  at  an  equal 
rate  is  unknown.  If  such  measurements  were  applied  to 
the  different  gymnastic  systems,  we  might  be  able  to  com- 
pare their  efficiency,  which  would  be  a  great  desideratum 
in  view  of  the  unfortunate  rivalry  between  them.  Total 
strength,  too,  can  be  greatly  increased.  Beyer  thinks 
that  from  sixteen  to  twenty-one  it  may  exceed  the 
average  or  normal  increment  fivefold,  and  he  adds,  ''  I 
firmly  believe  that  the  now  so  wonderful  performances 
of  most  of  our  strong  men  are  well  within  the  reach  of 
the  majority  of  healthy  men,  if  such  performances  were 
a  serious  enough  part  of  their  ambition  to  make  them  do 
the  exercises  necessary  to  develop  them."  Power  of  the 
organs  to  respond  to  good  training  by  increased  strength 
probably  reaches  well  into  middle  life. 

»  See  H.  G.  Beyer.  The  Influence  of  Exercise  on  Growth.  American 
Physical  Education  Review,  September-December,  1896,  vol.  1,  pp. 
76-87. 

66 


GYMNASTICS 

It  is  not  encouraging  to  learn  that,  according  to  a 
recent  writer/  we  now  have  seventy  times  as  many 
physicians  in  proportion  to  the  general  population  as 
there  are  physical  directors,  even  for  the  school  popula- 
tion alone  considered.  We  have  twice  as  many  physi- 
cians per  population  as  Great  Britain,  four  times  as 
many  as  Germany,  or  2  physicians,  1.8  ministers,  1.4 
lawyers  per  thousand  of  the  general  population;  while 
even  if  all  male  teachers  of  physical  training  taught  only 
males  of  the  military  age,  we  should  have  but  0.05  of  a 
teacher  per  thousand,  or  if  the  school  population  alone 
be  considered,  20  teachers  per  million  pupils.  Hence, 
it  is  inferred  that  the  need  of  wise  and  classified  teachers 
in  this  field  is  at  present  greater  than  in  any  other.  But 
fortunately  while  spontaneous,  unsystematic  exercise 
in  a  well-equipped  modern  gymnasium  may  in  rare  cases 
do  harm,  so  far  from  sharing  the  prejudice  often  felt  for 
it  by  professional  trainers,  we  believe  that  free  access  to 
it  without  control  or  direction  is  unquestionably  a  boon 
to  youth.  Even  if  its  use  be  sporadic  and  occasional,  as 
it  is  likely  to  be  with  equal  opportunity  for  out-of-door 
exercises  and  especially  sports,  practise  is  sometimes 
hygienic  almost  inversely  to  its  amount,  while  even 
lameness  from  initial  excess  has  its  lessons,  and  the 
sense  of  manifoldness  of  inferiorities  brought  home 
by  experiences  gives  a  wholesome  self-knowledge  and 
stimulus. 

In  this  country  more  than  elsewhere,  especially  in 
high  school  and  college,  gymnasium  work  has  been 
brought  into  healthful  connection  with  field  sports  and 
record  competitions  for  both  teams  and  individuals  who 
aspire  to  championship.     This  has  given  the  former  a 

1  J.  H.  McCurdy,  Physical  Training  as  a  Profession.     Association 
Seminar,  March,  1902,  vol.   10,  pp.  11-24. 

67 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

healthful  stimulus  although  it  is  felt  only  by  a  picked 
few.  Scores  of  records  have  been  established  for  run- 
ning, walking,  hurdling,  throwing,  putting,  swimming, 
rowing,  skating,  etc.,  each  for  various  shorter  and  longer 
distances  and  under  manifold  conditions,  and  for  both 
amateurs  and  professionals,  who  are  easily  accessible. 
These,  in  general,  show  a  slow  but  steady  advance  in  this 
country  since  1876,  when  athletics  were  established  here. 
In  that  year  there  was  not  a  single  world's  best  record 
held  by  an  American  amateur,  and  high-school  boys  of 
to-day  could  in  most,  though  not  in  all  lines,  have  won 
the  American  championship  twenty-five  years  ago.  Of 
course,  in  a  strict  sense,  intercollegiate  contests  do  not 
show  the  real  advance  in  athletics,  because  it  is  not 
necessary  for  a  man  in  order  to  win  a  championship  to  do 
his  best ;  but  they  do  show  general  improvement. 

We  select  for  our  purpose  a  few  of  those  records  long- 
est kept.  Not  dependent  on  external  conditions  like  boat- 
racing,  or  on  improved  apparatus  like  bicycling,  we  have 
interesting  data  of  a  very  different  order  for  physical 
measurements.  These  down  to  present  writing — July, 
1906 — are  as  follows:  For  the  100-yard  dash,  every 
annual  record  from  1876  to  1895  is  10  or  11  seconds, 
or  between  these,  save  in  1890,  where  Owen's  record  of 
9f  seconds  still  stands.  In  the  220-yard  run  there  is 
slight  improvement  since  1877,  but  here  the  record  of 
1896  (Wefers,  21-J  seconds)  has  not  been  surpassed. 
In  the  quarter-mile  run,  the  best  record  was  in  1900 
(Long,  47  seconds).  The  half-mile  record,  which  still 
stands,  was  made  in  1895  (Kilpatrick,  1  minute  52f  sec- 
onds) ;  the  mile  run  in  1895  (Conneff,  4  minutes  15 1 
seconds).  The  running  broad  jump  shows  a  very  steady 
improvement,  with  the  best  record  in  1900  (Prinstein, 
24  feet  li  inches).     The  running  high  jump  shows  im- 

68 


GYMNASTICS 

provement,  but  less,  with  the  record  of  1895  still  stand- 
ing (Sweeney,  6  feet  5f  inches).  The  record  for  pole 
vaulting,  corrected  to  November,  1905,  is  12  feet  Iff 
inches  (Dole)  ;  for  throwing  the  16-pound  hammer  head, 
100  feet  5  inches  (Queckberner)  ;  for  putting  the  16- 
pound  shot,  49  feet  6  inches  (Coe,  1905);  the  standing 
high  jump,  5  feet  5 J  inches  (Ewry)  ;  for  the  running 
high  jump,  6  feet  5f  inches  (Sweeney).  We  also  find 
that  if  we  extend  our  purview  to  include  all  kinds  of 
records  for  physical  achievement,  that  not  a  few  of  the 
amateur  records  for  activities  involving  strength  com- 
bined with  rapid  rhythm  movement  are  held  by  young 
men  of  twenty  or  even  less. 

In  putting  the  16-pound  shot  under  uniform  condi- 
tions the  record  has  improved  since  the  early  years  nearly 
10  feet  (Coe,  49  feet  6  inches,  best  at  present  writing, 
1906).  Pole  vaulting  shows  a  very  marked  advance  cul- 
minating in  1904  (Dole,  12  feet  iU  inches).  Most 
marked  of  all  perhaps  is  the  great  advance  in  throwing 
the  16-pound  hammer.  Beginning  between  70  and  80 
feet  in  the  early  years,  the  record  is  now  172  feet  11 
inches  (Flanagan,  1904).  The  two-mile  bicycle  race 
also  shows  marked  gain,  partly,  of  course,  due  to  im- 
provement in  the  wheel,  the  early  records  being  nearly 
7  minutes,  and  the  best  being  2  minutes  19  seconds 
(McLean,  1903).  Some  of  these  are  world  records,  and 
more  exceed  professional  records.^  These,  of  course,  no 
more  indicate  general  improvement  than  the  steady  re- 
duction of  time  in  horse-racing  suggests  betterment  in 
horses  generally. 

1  These  records  are  taken  from  the  World  Almanac,  1906,  and 
Olympic  Games  of  1906  at  Athens.  Edited  by  J.  E.  SulHvan,  Com- 
missioner from  the  United  States  to  the  OljTnpic  Games.  Spalding's 
Athletic  Library,  New  Yor.k,  July,  1906. 

69 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

In  Panhellenic  games  as  well  as  at  present,  athleti- 
cism in  its  manifold  forms  was  one  of  the  most  character- 
istic expressions  of  adolescent  nature  and  needs.  Not  a 
single  time  or  distance  record  of  antiquity  has  been  pre- 
served, although  Grasberger  ^  and  other  writers  would 
have  us  believe  that  in  those  that  are  comparable,  ancient 
youthful  champions  greatly  excelled  ours,  especially  in 
leaping  and  running.  While  we  are  far  from  cultivating 
mere  strength,  our  training  is  very  one-sided  from  the 
Greek  norm  of  unity  or  of  the  ideals  that  develop  the 
body  only  for  the  sake  of  the  soul.  While  gymnastics 
in  our  sense,  with  apparatus,  exercises,  and  measure- 
ments independently  of  games  was  unknown,  the  ideal 
and  motive  were  as  different  from  ours  as  was  its  method. 
Nothing,  so  far  as  is  known,  was  done  for  correcting  the 
ravages  of  work,  or  for  overcoming  hereditary  defects; 
and  until  athletics  degenerated  there  were  no  exercises 
for  the  sole  purpose  of  developing  muscle. 

On  the  whole,  while  modern  gymnastics  has  done 
more  for  the  trunk,  shoulders,  and  arms  than  for  the 
legs,  it  is  now  too  selfish  and  ego-centric,  deficient  on  the 
side  of  psychic  impulsion,  and  but  little  subordinated 
to  ethical  or  intellectual  development.  Yet  it  does  a 
great  physical  service  to  all  who  cultivate  it,  and  is  a 
safeguard  of  virtue  and  temperance.  Its  need  is  radical 
revision  and  coordination  of  various  cults  and  theories 
in  the  light  of  the  latest  psycho-physiological  science. 

Gymnastics  allies  itself  to  biometric  work.  The  pres- 
ent academic  zeal  for  physical  development  is  in  great 
need  of  closer  affiliation  with  anthropometry.  This  im- 
portant and  growing  department  will  be  represented  in 

1  O.  H.  Jaeger,  Die  Gymnastik  der  Hellenen.  Heitz,  Stuttgart,  1881. 
L.  Grasberger's  great  standard  work,  Erziehung  und  Untericht  im  klas- 
sischen  Alterthum.     Wiirzburg,  1864-81,  3  vols. 

70 


GYMNASTICS 

the  ideal  gymnasium  of  the  future — First,  by  courses, 
if  not  by  a  chair,  devoted  to  the  apparatus  of  measure- 
ments of  human  proportions  and  symmetry,  with  a 
kinesological  cabinet  where  young  men  are  instructed  in 
the  elements  of  auscultation,  the  use  of  calipers,  the 
sphygmograph,  spirometer,  plethysmography  kinesometer 
to  plot  graphic  curves,  compute  average  errors,  and 
tables  of  percentile  grades  and  in  statistical  methods, 
etc.  Second,  anatomy,  especially  of  muscles,  bones, 
heart,  and  skin,  will  be  taught,  and  also  their  physiology, 
with  stress  upon  myology,  the  effects  of  exercise  on  the 
flow  of  blood  and  lymph,  not  excluding  the  development 
of  the  upright  position,  and  all  that  it  involves  and  im- 
plies. Third,  hygiene  will  be  prominent  and  compre- 
hensive enough  to  cover  all  that  pertains  to  body-keeping, 
regimen,  sleep,  connecting  with  school  and  domestic  and 
public  hygiene — all  on  the  basis  of  modern  as  distinct 
from  the  archaic  physiology  of  Ling,  who,  it  is  sufficient 
to  remember,  died  in  1839,  before  this  science  was  recre- 
ated, and  the  persistence  of  whose  concepts  are  an 
anomalous  survival  to-day.  Mechanico-therapeutics,  the 
purpose  and  service  of  each  chief  kind  of  apparatus  and 
exercise,  the  value  of  work  on  stall  bars  with  chest 
weights,  of  chinning,  use  of  the  quarter-staff,  somer- 
saults, rings,  clubs,  dumb-bells,  work  with  straight  and 
flexed  knees  on  machinery,  etc.,  will  be  taught.  Fourth, 
the  history  of  gymnastics  from  the  time  of  its  highest 
development  in  Greece  to  the  present  is  full  of  interest 
and  has  a  very  high  and  not  yet  developed  culture  value 
for  youth.  This  department,  both  in  its  practical  and 
theoretical  side,  should  have  its  full  share  of  prizes  and 
scholarships  to  stimulate  the  seventy  to  seventy-five  per 
cent  of  students  who  are  now  unaffected  by  the  influence 
of  athletics.  By  these  methods  the  motivation  of  gymnas- 
6  71 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

tics,  which  now  in  large  measure  goes  to  waste  in  en- 
thusiasm, could  be  utilized  to  aid  the  greatly  needed 
intellectualization  of  those  exercises  which  in  their  nature 
are  more  akin  to  work  than  play.  Indeed,  Gutsmuths's 
first  definition  of  athletics  was  ''  work  under  the  garb 
of  youthful  pleasure."  So  to  develop  these  courses 
that  they  could  chiefly,  if  not  entirely,  satisfy  the  re- 
quirements for  the  A.  B.  degree,  would  coordinate  the 
work  of  the  now  isolated  curriculum  of  the  training- 
schools  with  that  of  the  college  and  thus  broaden  the 
sphere  of  the  latter;  but  besides  its  culture  value,  which 
I  hold  very  high,  such  a  step  would  prepare  for  the  new, 
important,  and,  as  we  have  seen,  very  inadequately 
manned  profession  of  physical  trainers.  This  has,  more- 
over, great  but  yet  latent  and  even  unsuspected  capaci- 
ties for  the  morals  of  our  academic  youth.  Grote  states 
that  among  the  ancient  Greeks  one-half  of  all  education 
was  devoted  to  the  body,  and  Galton  urges  that  they  as 
much  excelled  us  as  we  do  the  African  negro.  They  held 
that  if  physical  perfection  was  cultivated,  moral  and 
mental  excellence  would  follow;  and  that,  without  this, 
national  culture  rests  on  an  insecure  basis.  In  our  day 
there  are  many  new  reasons  to  believe  that  the  best 
nations  of  the  future  will  be  those  which  give  most  intel- 
ligent care  to  the  body. 


72 


CHAPTER   VI 

PLAY,    SPORTS,    AND    GAMES 

The  view  of  Groos  partial  and  a  better  explanation  of  play  proposed  as 
rehearsing  ancestral  activities — The  glory  of  Greek  physical  training, 
its  ideals  and  results — The  first  spontaneous  movements  of  infancy  as 
keys  to  the  past — Necessity  of  developing  basal  powers  before  those 
that  are  later  and  peculiar  to  the  individual — Plays  that  interest  due 
to  their  antiquity — Play  with  dolls — Play  distinguished  by  age — Play 
preferences  of  children  and  their  reasons — The  profound  significance 
of  rhythm — The  value  of  dancing  and  also  its  significance,  history, 
and  the  desirability  of  re-introducing  it — Fighting — Boxing — Wrest- 
ling— Bushido — Foot-ball — Military  ideals — Showing  off — Cold  baths 
— Hill  climbing — The  playground  movement — The  psychology  of  play 
— Its  relation  to  work. 

Play,  sports,  and  games  constitute  a  more  varied,  far 
older,  and  more  popular  field.  Here  a  very  different 
spirit  of  joy  and  gladness  rules.  Artifacts  often  enter 
but  can  not  survive  unless  based  upon  pretty  purely 
hereditary  momentum.  Thus  our  first  problem  is  to  seek 
both  the  motor  tendencies  and  the  psychic  motives  be- 
queathed to  us  from  the  past.  The  view  of  Groos  that 
play  is  practise  for  future  adult  activities  is  very  par- 
tial, superficial,  and  perverse.  It  ignores  the  past  where 
lie  the  keys  to  all  play  activities.  True  play  never 
practises  what  is  phyletically  new;  and  this,  industrial 
life  often  calls  for.  It  exercises  many  atavistic  and  rudi- 
mentary functions,  a  number  of  which  will  abort  before 
mxaturity,  but  which  live  themselves  out  in  play  like  the 
tadpole's  tail,  that  must  be  both  developed  and  used 
as  a  stimulus  to  the  growth  of  legs  which  will  otherwise 
never  mature.    In  place  of  this  mistaken  and  mislead- 

73 


YOUTH  :  ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

ing  view,  I  regard  play  as  the  motor  habits  and  spirit 
of  the  past  of  the  race,  persisting  in  the  present,  as 
rudimentary  functions  sometimes  of  and  always  akin 
to  rudimentary  organs.  The  best  index  and  guide  to 
the  stated  activities  of  adults  in  past  ages  is  found  in 
the  instinctive,  untaught,  and  non-imitative  plays  of 
children  which  are  the  most  spontaneous  and  exact  ex- 
pressions of  their  motor  needs.  The  young  grow  up 
into  the  same  forms  of  motor  activity,  as  did  genera- 
tions that  have  long  preceded  them,  only  to  a  limited 
extent ;  and  if  the  form  of  every  human  occupation  were 
to  change  to-day,  play  would  be  unaffected  save  in  some 
of  its  superficial  imitative  forms.  It  would  develop  the 
motor  capacities,  impulses,  and  fundamental  forms  of 
our  past  heritage,  and  the  transformation  of  these  into 
later  acquired  adult  forms  is  progressively  later.  In  play 
every  mood  and  movement  is  instinct  with  heredity. 
Thus  we  rehearse  the  activities  of  our  ancestors,  back 
we  know  not  how  far,  and  repeat  their  life  work  in 
summative  and  adumbrated  ways.  It  is  reminiscent, 
albeit  unconsciously,  of  our  line  of  descent ;  and  each  is 
the  key  to  the  other.  The  psycho-motive  impulses  that 
prompt  it  are  the  forms  in  which  our  forebears  have 
transmitted  to  us  their  habitual  activities.  Thus  stage 
by  stage  we  reenact  their  lives.  Once  in  the  phylon 
many  of  these  activities  were  elaborated  in  the  life  and 
death  struggle  for  existence.  Now  the  elements  and  com- 
binations oldest  in  the  muscle  history  of  the  race  are  re- 
represented  earliest  in  the  individual,  and  those  later  fol- 
low in  order.  This  is  why  the  heart  of  youth  goes  out  into 
play  as  into  nothing  else,  as  if  in  it  man  remembered 
a  lost  paradise.  This  is  why,  unlike  gymnastics,  play 
has  as  much  soul  as  body,  and  also  why  it  so  makes  for 
unity  of  body  and  soul  that  the  proverb  ' '  Man  is  whole 

74 


PLAY,  SPORTS,  AND  GAMES 

only  when  he  plays  "  suggests  that  the  purest  plays  are 
those  that  enlist  both  alike.  To  address  the  body  pre- 
dominantly strengthens  unduly  the  fleshy  elements, 
and  to  overemphasize  the  soul  causes  weakness  and 
automatisms.  Thus  understood,  play  is  the  ideal  type 
of  exercise  for  the  young,  most  favorable  for  growth, 
and  most  self-regulating  in  both  kind  and  amount.  For 
its  forms  the  pulse  of  adolescent  enthusiasm  beats 
highest.  It  is  unconstrained  and  free  to  follow  any 
outer  or  inner  impulse.  The  zest  of  it  vents  and  satisfies 
the  strong  passion  of  youth  for  intense  erethic  and  per- 
haps orgiastic  states,  gives  an  exaltation  of  self-feeling 
so  craved  that  with  no  vicarious  outlet  it  often  impels 
to  drink,  and  best  of  all  realizes  the  watchword  of  the 
Turners,^  frisch,  frei,  frdhlich,  fromm. 

Ancient  Greece,  the  history  and  literature  of  which 
owe  their  perennial  charm  for  all  later  ages  to  the  fact 
that  they  represent  the  eternal  adolescence  of  the  world, 
best  illustrates  what  this  enthusiasm  means  for  youth. 
Jager  and  Guildersleeve,  and  yet  better  Grasberger, 
would  have  us  believe  that  the  Panhellenic  and  especially 
the  Olympic  games  combined  many  of  the  best  features 
of  a  modern  prize  exhibition,  a  camp-meeting,  fair, 
Derby  day,  a  Wagner  festival,  a  meeting  of  the  British 
Association,  a  country  cattle  show,  intercollegiate  games, 
and  medieval  tournament ;  that  they  were  the  ' '  acme  of 
festive  life  "  and  drew  all  who  loved  gold  and  glory, 
and  that  night  and  death  never  seemed  so  black  as  by 
contrast  with  their  splendor.  The  deeds  of  the  young 
athletes  were  ascribed  to  the  inspiration  of  the  gods, 
whose  abodes  they  lit  up  with  glory ;  and  in  doing  them 
honor  these  discordant  states  found  a  bond  of  unity. 

1  Fresh,  free,  jovial,  pious. 

75 


YOUTH  :  ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

The  victor  was  crowned  with  a  simple  spray  of  laurel ; 
cities  vied  with  each  other  for  the  honor  of  having  given 
him  birth,  their  walls  were  taken  down  for  his  entry 
and  immediately  rebuilt;  sculptors,  for  whom  the  five 
ancient  games  were  schools  of  posture,  competed  in  the 
representation  of  his  form;  poets  gave  him  a  pedigree 
reaching  back  to  the  gods,  and  Pindar,  who  sang  that 
only  he  is  great  who  is  great  with  his  hands  and  feet, 
raised  his  victory  to  symbolize  the  eternal  prevalence 
of  good  over  evil.  The  best  body  implied  the  best  mind ; 
and  even  Plato,  to  whom  tradition  gives  not  only  one 
of  the  fairest  souls,  but  a  body  remarkable  for  both 
strength  and  beauty,  and  for  whom  weakness  was  peri- 
lously near  to  wickedness,  and  ugliness  to  sin,  argues 
that  education  must  be  so  conducted  that  the  body  can 
be  safely  entrusted  to  the  care  of  the  soul  and  suggests, 
what  later  became  a  slogan  of  a  more  degenerate  gladi- 
atorial athleticism,  that  to  be  well  and  strong  is  to 
be  a  philosopher — valare  est  philosophari.  The  Greeks 
could  hardly  conceive  bodily  apart  from  psychic  educa- 
tion, and  physical  was  for  the  sake  of  mental  training. 
A  sane,  whole  mind  could  hardly  reside  in  an  unsound 
body  upon  the  integrity  of  which  it  was  dependent. 
Knowledge  for  its  own  sake,  from  this  standpoint,  is  a 
dangerous  superstition,  for  what  frees  the  mind  is  dis- 
astrous if  it  does  not  give  self-control ;  better  ignorance 
than  knowledge  that  does  not  develop  a  motor  side. 
Body  culture  is  ultimately  only  for  the  sake  of  the  mind 
and  soul,  for  body  is  only  its  other  ego.  Not  only  is 
all  muscle  culture  at  the  same  time  brain-building,  but 
a  book-worm  with  soft  hands,  tender  feet,  and  tough 
rump  from  much  sitting,  or  an  anemic  girl  prodigy,  ' '  in 
the  morning  hectic,  in  the  evening  electric,"  is  a  mon- 
ster.   Play  at  its  best  is  only  a  school  of  ethics.    It  gives 

76 


PLAY,  SPORTS,  AND  GAMES 

not  only  strength  but  courage  and  confidence,  tends 
to  simplify  life  and  habits,  gives  energy,  decision, 
and  promptness  to  the  will,  brings  consolation  and  peace 
of  mind  in  evil  days,  is  a  resource  in  trouble  and  brings 
out  individuality. 

How  the  ideals  of  physical  preformed  those  of  moral 
and  mental  training  in  the  land  and  day  of  Socrates  is 
seen  in  the  identification  of  knowledge  and  virtue, 
'^  Kennen  und  Kdnnen."  ^  Only  an  extreme  and  one- 
sided intellectualism  separates  them  and  assumes  that  it 
is  easy  to  know  and  hard  to  do.  From  the  ethical  stand- 
point, philosophy,  and  indeed  all  knowledge,  is  the  art 
of  being  and  doing  good,  conduct  is  the  only  real  sub- 
ject of  knowledge,  and  there  is  no  science  but  morals. 
He  is  the  best  man,  says  Xenophon,  who  is  always  study- 
ing how  to  improve,  and  he  is  the  happiest  who  feels 
that  he  is  improving.  Life  is  a  skill,  an  art  like  a 
handicraft,  and  true  knowledge  a  form  of  will.  Good 
moral  and  physical  development  are  more  than  analo- 
gous; and  where  intelligence  is  separated  from  action 
the  former  becomes  mystic,  abstract,  and  desiccated, 
and  the  latter  formal  routine.  Thus  mere  conscience 
and  psychological  integrity  and  righteousness  are  allied 
and  mutually  inspiring. 

Not  only  play,  which  is  the  purest  expression  of 
motor  heredity,  but  work  and  all  exercise  owe  most  of 
whatever  pleasure  they  bring  to  the  past.  The  first 
influence  of  all  right  exercise  for  those  in  health  is  a 
feeling  of  well-being  and  exhilaration.  This  is  one  chief 
source  of  the  strange  enthusiasm  felt  for  many  special 
forms  of  activity,  and  the  feeling  is  so  strong  that  it 
animates  many  forms  of  it  that  are  hygienically  unfit. 

1  To  know  and  to  have  the  power  to  do. 

77 


YOUTH;    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

To  act  vigorously  from  a  full  store  of  energy  gives  a 
reflex  of  pleasure  that  is  sometimes  a  passion  and  may 
fairly  intoxicate.  Animals  must  move  or  cease  grow- 
ing and  die.  While  to  be  weak  is  to  be  miserable,  to  feel 
strong  is  a  joy  and  glory.  It  gives  a  sense  of  superior- 
ity, dignity,  endurance,  courage,  confidence,  enterprise, 
power,  personal  validity,  virility,  and  virtue  in  the 
etymological  sense  of  that  noble  word.  To  be  active, 
agile,  strong,  is  especially  the  glory  of  young  men.  Our 
nature  and  history  have  so  disposed  our  frame  that  thus 
all  physiological  and  psychic  processes  are  stimulated, 
products  of  decomposition  are  washed  out  by  oxygena- 
tion and  elimination,  the  best  reaction  of  all  the  gangli- 
onic and  sympathetic  activities  is  aroused,  and  vegetative 
processes  are  normalized.  Activity  may  exalt  the  spirit 
almost  to  the  point  of  ecstasy,  and  the  physical  pleasure 
of  it  diffuse,  irradiate,  and  mitigate  the  sexual  stress 
just  at  the  age  when  its  premature  localization  is  most 
deleterious.  Just  enough  at  the  proper  time  and  rate 
contributes  to  permanent  elasticity  of  mood  and  disposi- 
tion, gives  moral  self-control,  rouses  a  love  of  freedom 
with  all  that  that  great  word  means,  and  favors  all 
higher  human  aspirations. 

In  all  these  modes  of  developing  our  efferent  powers, 
we  conceive  that  the  race  comes  very  close  to  the  in- 
dividual youth,  and  that  ancestral  momenta  animate 
motor  neurons  and  muscles  and  preside  over  most  of  the 
combinations.  Some  of  the  elements  speak  with  a  still 
small  voice  raucous  with  age.  The  first  spontaneous 
movements  of  infancy  are  hieroglyphs,  to  most  of  which 
we  have  as  yet  no  good  key.  Many  elements  are  so 
impacted  and  felted  together  that  we  can  not  analyze 
them.  Many  are  extinct  and  many  perhaps  made  but 
once  and  only  hint  things  we  can  not  apprehend.    Later 

78 


PLAY,  SPORTS,  AND  GAMES 

the  rehearsals  are  fuller,  and  their  significance  more  in- 
telligible, and  in  boyhood  and  youth  the  correspondences 
are  plain  to  all  who  have  eyes  to  see.  Pleasure  is  always 
exactly  proportional  to  the  directness  and  force  of  the 
current  of  heredity,  and  in  play  we  feel  most  fully  and 
intensely  ancestral  joys.  The  pain  of  toil  died  with 
our  forebears ;  its  vestiges  in  our  play  give  pure  delight. 
Its  variety  prompts  to  diversity  that  enlarges  our  life. 
Primitive  men  and  animals  played,  and  that  too  has 
left  its  traces  in  us.  Some  urge  that  work  was  evolved 
or  degenerated  from  play;  but  the  play  field  broadens 
as  with  succeeding  generations  youth  is  prolonged,  for 
play  is  always  and  everywhere  the  best  synonym  of 
youth.  All  are  young  at  play  and  only  in  play,  and 
the  best  possible  characterization  of  old  age  is  the  ab- 
sence of  the  soul  and  body  of  play.  Only  senile  and 
overspecialized  tissues  of  brain,  heart,  and  muscles  know 
it  not. 

Gulick  ^  has  urged  that  what  makes  certain  exercises 
more  interesting  than  others  is  to  be  found  in  the  phylon. 
The  power  to  throw  with  accuracy  and  speed  was  once 
pivotal  for  survival,  and  non-throwers  were  eliminated. 
Those  who  could  throw  unusually  well  best  overcame 
enemies,  killed  game,  and  sheltered  family.  The  ner- 
vous and  muscular  systems  are  organized  with  certain 
definite  tendencies  and  have  back  of  them  a  racial  set- 
ting. So  running  and  dodging  with  speed  and  endur- 
ance, and  hitting  with  a  club,  were  also  basal  to  hunting 
and  fighting.  Now  that  the  need  of  these  is  less  urgent 
for  utilitarian  purposes,  they  are  still  necessary  for  per- 
fecting the  organism.  This  makes,  for  instance,  base- 
ball  racially  familiar,   because  it   represents   activities 

1  Interest  in  Relation  to  Muscular  Exercise.      American  Physical 
Education  Review,  June,  1902,  vol.  7,  pp.  57-65. 

79 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

that  were  once  and  for  a  long  time  necessary  for  sur- 
vival. We  inherit  tendencies  of  muscular  coordination 
that  have  been  of  great  racial  utility.  The  best  athletic 
sports  and  games  are  composed  of  these  racially  old 
elements,  so  that  phylogenetic  muscular  history  is  of 
great  importance.  Why  is  it,  this  writer  asks,  that  a 
city  man  so  loves  to  sit  all  day  and  fishi  It  is  because 
this  interest  dates  back  to  time  immemorial.  We  are 
the  sons  of  fishermen,  and  early  life  was  by  the  water's 
side,  and  this  is  our  food  supply.  This  explains  why 
certain  exercises  are  more  interesting  than  others.  It 
is  because  they  touch  and  revive  the  deep  basic  emo- 
tions of  the  race.  Thus  we  see  that  play  is  not  doing 
things  to  be  useful  later,  but  it  is  rehearsing  racial 
history.  Plays  and  games  change  only  in  their  ex- 
ternal form,  but  the  underlying  neuro-muscular  activi- 
ties, and  also  the  psychic  content  of  them,  are  the  same. 
Just  as  psychic  states  must  be  lived  out  up  through  the 
grades,  so  the  physical  activities  must  be  played  off, 
each  in  its  own  time. 

The  best  exercise  for  the  young  should  thus  be  more 
directed  to  develop  the  basal  powers  old  to  the  race  than 
those  peculiar  to  the  individual,  and  it  should  enforce 
those  psycho-neural  and  muscular  forms  which  race 
habit  has  handed  down  rather  than  insist  upon  those  ar- 
bitrarily designed  to  develop  our  ideas  of  symmetry 
regardless  of  heredity.  The  best  guide  to  the  former 
is  Merest,  zest,  and  spontaneity.  Hereditary  momenta 
really  determine,  too,  the  order  in  which  nerve  centers 
come  into  function.  The  oldest,  racial  parts  come  first, 
and  those  which  are  higher  and  represent  volition  come 
in  much  later.^    As  Hughlings  Jaclvson  has  well  shown, 

1  The  Influence  of  Exercise  upon  Growth,  by  Frederic  Burk.      Ameri- 
can Physical  Education  Review,  December,  1899,  vol.  4,  pp.  340-349. 

80 


PLAY,  SPORTS,  AND  GAMES 

speech  uses  most  of  the  same  organs  as  does  eating,  but 
those  concerned  with  the  former  are  controlled  from  a 
higher  level  of  nerve-cells.  By  right  mastication,  deg- 
lutition, etc.,  we  are  thus  developing  speech  organs. 
Thus  not  only  the  kind  but  the  time  of  forms  and  de- 
grees of  exercise  is  best  prescribed  by  heredity.  All 
growth  is  more  or  less  rhythmic.  There  are  seasons  of 
rapid  increment  followed  by  rest  and  then  perhaps  suc- 
ceeded by  a  period  of  augmentation,  and  this  may  oc- 
cur several  times.  Roberts's  fifth  parliamentary  report 
shows  that  systematic  gymnastics,  which,  if  applied  at 
the  right  age,  produce  such  immediate  and  often  sur- 
prising development  of  lung  capacity,  utterly  fail  with 
boys  of  twelve,  because  this  nascent  period  has  not  yet 
come.  Donaldson  showed  that  if  the  eyelid  of  a  young 
kitten  be  forced  open  prematurely  at  birth  and  stimu- 
lated with  light,  medullation  was  premature  and  im- 
perfect; so,  too,  if  proper  exercise  is  deferred  too  long, 
we  know  that  little  result  is  achieved.  The  sequence 
in  which  the  maturation  of  levels,  nerve  areas,  and 
bundles  of  fibers  develop  may  be,  as  Flechsig  thinks, 
causal;  or,  according  to  Cajal,  energy,  originally  em- 
ployed in  growth  by  cell  division,  later  passes  to  fiber 
extension  and  the  development  of  latent  cells;  or,  as 
in  young  children,  the  nascent  period  of  finger  move- 
ments may  stimulate  that  of  the  thumb  which  comes 
later,  and  the  independent  movement  of  the  two  eyes, 
their  subsequent  coordination,  and  so  on  to  perhaps  a 
third  and  yet  higher  level.  Thus  exercise  ought  to  de- 
velop nature's  first  intention  and  fulfil  the  law  of 
nascent  periods,  or  else  not  only  no  good  but  great 
harm  may  be  done.  Hence  every  determination  of  these 
periods  is  of  great  practical  as  well  as  scientific  im- 
portance.    The  following   are  the   chief  attempts  yet 

81 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

made  to  fix  them,  which  show  the  significance  of  adoles- 
cence. 

The  doll  curve  reaches  its  point  of  highest  intensity 
between  eight  and  nine/  and  it  is  nearly  ended  at  fif- 
teen, although  it  may  persist.  Children  can  give  no 
better  reason  why  they  stop  playing  with  dolls  than 
because  other  things  are  liked  better,  or  they  are  too 
old,  ashamed,  love  real  babies,  etc.  The  Roman  girl, 
when  ripe  for  marriage,  hung  up  her  childhood  doll 
as  a  votive  offering  to  Venus.  Mrs.  Carlyle,  who  was 
compelled  to  stop,  made  sumptuous  dresses  and  a  four- 
post  bed,  and  made  her  doll  die  upon  a  funeral  pyre 
like  Dido,  after  speaking  her  last  farewell  and  stab- 
bing herself  with  a  penknife  by  way  of  Tyrian  sword. 
At  thirteen  or  fourteen  it  is  more  distinctly  realized 
that  dolls  are  not  real,  because  they  have  no  inner  life 
or  feeling,  yet  many  continue  to  play  with  them  with 
great  pleasure,  in  secret,  till  well  on  in  the  teens  or 
twenties.  Occasionally  single  women  or  married  women 
with  no  children,  and  in  rare  cases  even  those  who  have 
children,  play  dolls  all  their  lives.  Gales 's"  student 
concluded  that  the  girls  who  played  with  dolls  up  to 
or  into  pubescent  years  were  usually  those  who  had 
the  fewest  number,  that  they  played  with  them  in  the 
most  realistic  manner,  kept  them  because  actually  most 
fond  of  them,  and  were  likely  to  be  more  scientific, 
steady,  and  less  sentimental  than  those  who  dropped 
them  early.  But  the  instinct  that  ''  dollifies  "  new  or 
most  unfit  things  is  gone,  as  also  the  subtle  points  of 
contact  between  doll  play  and  idolatry.    Before  puberty 


»  A  study  of  Dolls,  by  G.  Stanley  Hall  and  A.  C.  Ellis.  Pedagogical 
Seminary,  December,  1896,  vol.  4,  pp.  129-175. 

2  Studies  in  Imagination,  by  Lillian  II.  Chalmers.  Pedagogical 
Seminary,  April,  1900,  vol.  7,  pp.  111-123. 

82 


PLAY,  SPORTS,  AND  GAMES 

dolls  are  more  likely  to  be  adults;  after  puberty  they 
are  almost  always  children  or  babies.  There  is  no 
longer  a  struggle  between  doubt  and  reality  in  the  doll 
cosmos,  no  more  abandon  to  the  doll  illusion ;  but  where 
it  lingers  it  is  a  more  atavistic  rudiment,  and  just  as 
at  the  height  of  the  fever  dolls  are  only  in  small  part 
representatives  of  future  children,  the  saying  that  the 
first  child  is  the  last  doll  is  probably  false.  Nor  are 
doll  and  child  comparable  to  first  and  second  dentition, 
and  it  is  doubtful  if  children  who  play  with  dolls  as 
children  with  too  great  abandonment  are  those  who 
make  the  best  mothers  later,  or  if  it  has  any  value  as 
a  preliminary  practise  of  motherhood.  The  number  of 
motor  activities  that  are  both  inspired  and  unified  by 
this  form  of  play  and  that  can  always  be  given  whole- 
some direction  is  almost  incredible,  and  has  been  too 
long  neglected  both  by  psychologists  and  teachers.  Few 
purer  types  of  the  rehearsal  by  the  individual  of  the 
history  of  the  race  can  probably  be  found  even  though 
we  can  not  yet  analyze  the  many  elements  involved  and 
assign  to  each  its  phyletic  correlate. 

In  an  interesting  paper  Dr.  Gulick  ^  divides  play 
into  three  childish  periods,  separated  by  the  ages  three 
and  seven,  and  attempts  to  characterize  the  plays  of 
early  adolescence  from  twelve  to  seventeen  and  of  later 
adolescence  from  seventeen  to  twenty-three.  Of  the  first 
two  periods  he  says,  children  before  seven  rarely  play 
games  spontaneously,  but  often  do  so  under  the  stimulus 
of  older  persons.  From  seven_tQ_±w,eLv£!,_  gaxnes.  ar^~al- 
most  exclusively  individualistic  and  competitive,  but  in 
early  adolescence  ' '  two  elements  predominate — first,  the 
plays  are  predominantly  team  games,  in  which  the  in- 

1  Some   Psychical   Aspects  of  Physical   Exercise.     Popular  Science 
Monthly,  October,  1898,  vol.  53,  pp.  793-805. 

83 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

dividual  is  more  or  less  sacrificed  for  the  whole,  in  which 
there    is    obedience   to    a    captain,    in    which    there    is 
cooperation  among  a  number  for  a  given  end,  in  which 
play  has  a  program  and  an  end.    The  second  character- 
istic of  the  period  is  with  reference  to  its  plays,  and  there 
seems   to   be   all   of   savage    out-of-door   life — hunting, 
fishing,   stealing,   swimming,   rowing,    sailing,    fighting, 
hero-worship,  adventure,  love  of  animals,  etc.    This  char- 
acteristic   obtains   more    with    boys   than    with    girls." 
/^'  The  plays  of  adolescence  are  socialistic,   demanding 
^the  heathen  virtues  of  courage,  endurance,  self-control, 
'  bravery,  loyalty,  enthusiasm. ' ' 

Croswell  ^  found  that  among  2,000  children  familiar 
with  700  kinds  of  amusements,  those  involving  physical 
exercises  predominated  over  all  others,  and  that  "  at 
every  age  after  the  eighth  year  they  were  represented 
as  almost  two  to  one,  and  in  the  sixteenth  year  rose 
among  boys  as  four  to  one. ' '  The  age  of  the  greatest 
number  of  different  amusements  is  from  ten  to  eleven, 
nearly  fifteen  being  mentioned,  but  for  the  next  eight 
or  nine  years  there  is  a  steady  decline  of  number,  and 
progressive  specialization  occurs.  The  games  of  chase, 
which  are  suggestive  on  the  recapitulation  theory,  rise 
from  eleven  per  cent  in  boys  of  six  to  nineteen  per  cent 
at  nine,  but  soon  after  decline,  and  at  sixteen  have  fallen 
to  less  than  four  per  cent.  Toys  and  original  make- 
believe  games  decline  still  earlier,  while  ball  rises  stead- 
ily and  rapidly  to  eighteen,  and  card  and  table  games 
rise  very  steadily  from  ten  to  fifteen  in  girls,  but  the 
increment  is  much  less  in  boys.  ''  A  third  or  more  of 
all  the  amusements  of  boys  just  .entering  their  teens  are 
games  of  contest — games  in  which  the  end  is  in  one  way 

»  Amusements  of  Worcester  School  Children.  Pedagogical  Seminary, 
September,  1899,  vol.  6,  pp.  314-371. 

84 


PLAY,  SPORTS,  AND  GAMES 

or  another  to  gain  an  advantage  over  one's  fellows,  in 
which  the  interest  is  in  the  strnggle  between  peers." 
*  *  As  children  approach  the  teens,  a  tendency  arises  that 
is  well  expressed  by  one  of  the  girls  who  no  longer 
makes  playthings  but  things  that  are  useful."  Parents 
and  society  must,  therefore,  provide  the  most  favorable 
conditions  for  the  kind  of  amusement  fitting  at  each 
age.  As  the  child  grows  older,  society  plays  a  larger  role 
in  all  the  child's  amusements,  and  from  the  thirteenth 
year  '*  amusements  take  on  a  decidedly  cooperative  and 
competitive  character,  and  efforts  are  more  and  more 
confined  to  the  accomplishments  of  some  definite  aim. 
The  course  for  this  period  will  concentrate  the  effort 
upon  fewer  lines,"  and  more  time  will  be  devoted  to 
each.  The  desire  for  mastery  is  now  at  its  height.  The 
instinct  is  to  maintain  one's  self  independently  and  ask 
no  odds.  At  fourteen,  especially,  the  impulse  is,  in 
manual  training,  to  make  something  and  perhaps  to 
cooperate. 

McGhee  ^  collected  the  play  preferences  of  15,718 
children,  and  found  a  very  steady  decline  in  running 
plays  among  girls  from  nine  to  eighteen,  but  a  far  more 
rapid  rise  in  plays  of  chance  from  eleven  to  fifteen,  and 
a  very  rapid  rise  from  sixteen  to  eighteen.  From  eleven 
onward  with  the  most  marked  fall  before  fourteen,  there 
was  a  distinct  decline  in  imitative  games  for  girls  and  a 
slower  one  for  boys.  Games  involving  rivalry  increased 
rapidly  among  boys  from  eleven  to  sixteen  and  still  more 
rapidly  among  girls,  their  percentage  of  preference  even 
exceeding  that  of  boys  at  eighteen,  when  it  reached  near- 
ly seventy  per   cent.     With  adolescence,   specialization 


1  A  Study  in  the  Play  Life  of  Some  South  Carohna  Children.     Peda- 
gogical Seminary,  December,  1900,  vol.  7,  pp.  459-478. 

85 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

upon  a  few  plays  was  markedly  increased  in  the  teens 
among  boys,  whereas  with  girls  in  general  there  were  a 
large  number  of  plays  which  were  popular  with  none 
preeminent.  Even  at  this  age  the  principle  of  organi- 
zation in  games  so  strong  with  boys  is  very  slight  with 
girls.  Puberty  showed  the  greatest  increase  of  interest 
among  pubescent  girls  for  croquet,  and  among  boys  for 
swimming,  although  baseball  and  football,  the  most 
favored  for  boys,  rose  rapidly.  Although  the  author 
does  not  state  it,  it  would  seem  from  his  data  that  plays 
peculiar  to  the  different  seasons  were  most  marked 
among  boys,  in  part,  at  least,  because  their  activities  are 
more  out  of  doors. 

Ferrero  and  others  have  shown  that  the  more  intense 
activities  of  primitive  people  tend  to  be  rhythmic  and 
with  strongly  automatic  features.  No  form  of  activity 
is  more  universal  than  the  dance,  which  is  not  only  in- 
tense but  may  express  chiefly  in  terms  of  fundamental 
movements,  stripped  of  their  accessory  finish  and  detail, 
every  important  act,  vocation,  sentiment,  or  event  in  the 
life  of  man  in  language  so  universal  and  symbolic  that 
music  and  poetry  themselves  seem  to  have  arisen  out  of 
it.  Before  it  became  specialized  much  labor  was  cast  in 
rhythmic  form  and  often  accompanied  by  time-marking 
and  even  tone  to  secure  the  stimulus  of  concert  on  both 
economic  and  social  principles.  In  the  dark  background 
of  history  there  is  now  much  evidence  that  at  some  point, 
play,  art,  and  work  were  not  divorced.  They  all  may 
have  sprung  from  rhythmic  movement  which  is  so  deep- 
seated  in  biology  because  it  secures  most  joy  of  life  with 
least  expense.  By  it  Eros  of  old  ordered  chaos,  and  by 
its  judicious  use  the  human  soul  is  cadenced  to  great 
efforts  toward  high  ideals.  The  many  work-songs  to 
secure  concerted  action  in  lifting,  pulling,  stepping,  the 

86 


PLAY,  SPORTS,  AND   GAMES 

use  of  flail,  lever,  saw,  ax,  hammer,  hoe,  loom,  etc.,  show 
that  arsis  and  thesis  represent  flexion  and  extension,  that 
accent  originated  in  the  acme  of  muscular  stress,  as  well 
as  how  rhythm  eases  work  and  also  makes  it  social. 
Most  of  the  old  work-canticles  are  lost,  and  machines 
have  made  work  more  serial,  while  rhythms  are  obscured 
or  imposed  from  without  so  as  to  limit  the  freedom  they 
used  to  express.  Now  all  basal,  central,  or  strength 
movements  tend  to  be  oscillator}^,  automatically  repeti- 
tive, or  rhythmic  like  savage  music,  as  if  the  waves  of  the 
primeval  sea  whence  we  came  still  beat  in  them,  just  as 
all  fine  peripheral  and  late  movements  tend  to  be  serial, 
special,  vastly  complex,  and  diversified.  It  is  thus  nat- 
ural that  during  the  period  of  greatest  strength  incre- 
ment in  muscular  development,  the  rhythmic  function  of 
nearly  all  fundamental  movements  should  be  strongly  ac- 
centuated. At  the  dawn  of  this  age  boys  love  marching ; 
and,  as  our  returns  show,  there  is  a  very  remarkable  rise 
in  the  passion  for  beating  time,  jigging,  double  shuffling, 
rhythmic  clapping,  etc.  The  more  prominent  the  factor 
of  repetition  the  more  automatic  and  the  less  strenuous  is 
the  hard  and  new  effort  of  constant  psychic  adjustment 
and  attention.  College  yells,  cheers,  rowing,  marching, 
processions,  bicycling,  running,  tug-of-war,  calisthenics 
and  class  gymnastics  with  counting,  and  especially  with 
music,  horseback  riding,  etc.,  are  rhythmic ;  tennis,  base- 
ball and  football,  basket-ball,  golf,  polo,  etc.,  are  less 
rhythmic,  but  are  concerted  and  intense.  These  latter 
emphasize  the  conflict  factor,  best  brought  out  in  fencing, 
boxing,  and  wrestling,  and  lay  more  stress  on  the  psychic 
elements  of  attention  and  skill.  The  effect  of  musical 
accompaniment,  which  the  Swedish  system  wrongly  re- 
jects, is  to  make  the  exercises  more  fundamental  and 
automatic,  and  to  proportionately  diminish  the  conscious 
7  87 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

effort   and    relieve    the    neuro-muscular   mechanism   in- 
volved in  fine  movements. 

Adolescence  is  the  golden  period  of  nascency  for 
rhythm.  Before  this  change  many  children  have  a  very 
imperfect  sense  of  it,  and  even  those  who  march,  sing, 
play,  or  read  poetry  v^dth  correct  and  overemphasized 
time  marking,  experience  a  great  broadening  of  the  hori- 
zon of  consciousness,  and  a  marked,  and,  for  mental  pow- 
er and  scope,  all-conditioning  increase  in  the  carrying 
power  of  attention  and  the  sentence-sense.  The  soul  now 
feels  the  beauty  of  cadences,  good  ascension,  and  the  sym- 
metry of  well-developed  periods — and  all,  as  I  am  con- 
vinced, because  this  is  the  springtime  of  the  strength 
movements  which  are  predominantly  rhythmic.  Not  only 
does  music  start  in  time  marking,  the  drum  being  the  old- 
est instrument,  but  quantity  long  took  precedence  of  sense 
and  form  of  content,  both  melody  and  words  coming  later. 
Even  rhythmic  tapping  or  beating  of  the  foot  (whence 
the  poetic  feet  of  prosody  and  meter  thus  later  imposed 
on  monotonous  prose  to  make  poetry)  exhilarates,  makes 
glad  the  soul  and  inspires  it  to  attack,  gives  compulsion 
and  a  sense  of  unity.  The  psychology  of  rhythm  shows 
its  basal  value  in  cadencing  the  soul.  We  can  not  con- 
ceive what  war,  love,  and  religion  would  be  without  it. 
The  old  adage  that  ''  the  parent  of  prose  is  poetry,  the 
parent  of  poetry  is  music,  the  parent  of  music  is  rhythm, 
and  the  parent  of  rhythm  is  God  "  seems  borne  out  not 
only  in  history,  but  by  the  nature  of  thought  and  atten- 
tion that  does  not  move  in  a  continuum,  but  flies  and 
perches  alternately,  or  on  stepping-stones  and  as  if  in- 
fluenced by  the  tempo  of  the  leg  swinging  as  a  compound 
pendulum. 

Dancing  is  one  of  the  best  expressions  of  pure  play 
and  of  the  motor  needs  of  youth.     Perhaps  it  is  the  most 


PLAY,  SPORTS,  AND   GAMES 

liberal  of  all  forms  of  motor  education.  Schopenhauer 
thought  it  the  apex  of  physiological  irritability  and  that 
it  made  animal  life  most  vividly  conscious  of  its  existence 
and  most  exultant  in  exhibiting  it.  In  very  ancient 
times  China  ritualized  it  in  the  spring  and  made  it  a 
large  part  of  the  education  of  boys  after  the  age  of  thir- 
teen. Neale  thinks  it  was  originally  circular  or  orbicu- 
lar worship,  which  he  deems  oldest.  In  Japan,  in  the 
priestly  Salic  College  of  ancient  Rome,  in  Egypt,  in  the 
Greek  Apollo  cult,  it  was  a  form  of  worship.  St.  Basil 
advised  it;  St.  Gregory  introduced  it  into  religious  ser- 
vices. The  early  Christian  bishops,  called  prsesuls,  led 
the  sacred  dance  around  the  altar ;  and  only  in  692,  and 
again  in  1617,  was  it  forbidden  in  church.  Neale  and 
others  have  shown  how  the  choral  processionals  with  all 
the  added  charm  of  vestment  and  intonation  have  had 
far  more  to  do  in  Christianizing  many  low  tribes,  who 
could  not  understand  the  language  of  the  church,  than 
has  preaching.  Savages  are  nearly  all  great  dancers,  imi- 
tating every  animal  they  know,  dancing  out  their  own 
legends,  with  ritual  sometimes  so  exacting  that  error 
means  death.  The  character  of  people  is  often  learned 
from  their  dances,  and  Moliere  says  the  destiny  of  nations 
depends  on  them.  The  gayest  dancers  are  often  among 
the  most  downtrodden  and  unhappy  people.  Some  mys- 
teries can  be  revealed  only  in  them,  as  holy  passion-plays. 
If  we  consider  the  history  of  secular  dances,  we  find  that 
some  of  them,  when  first  invented  or  in  vogue,  evoked 
the  greatest  enthusiasm.  One  writer  says  that  the  polka 
so  delighted  France  and  England  that  statesmen  forgot 
politics.  The  spirit  of  the  old  Polish  aristocracy  still 
lives  in  the  polonaise.  The  gipsy  dances  have  inspired 
a  new  school  of  music.  The  Greek  drama  grew  out  of 
the  evolution  of  the  tragic  chorus.     National  dances  like 

89 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

the  hornpipe  and  reel  of  Scotland,  the  Reihen  of  Ger- 
many, the  rondes  of  France,  the  Spanish  tarantella  and 
chaconney  the  strathspey  from  the  Spey  Valley,  the  Irish 
jig,  etc.,  express  racial  traits.  Instead  of  the  former 
vast  repertory,  the  stately  pavone,  the  graceful  and  dig- 
nified saraband,  the  wild  salterrelle,  the  bourree  with 
song  and  strong  rh^lhm,  the  light  and  skippy  bolero,  the 
courtly  bayadere,  the  dramatic  plugge,  gavotte,  and 
other  peasant  dances  in  costume,  the  fast  and  furious 
fandango,  weapon  and  military  dances;  in  place  of  the 
pristine  power  to  express  love,  mourning,  justice,  pen- 
alty, fear,  anger,  consolation,  divine  service,  symbolic 
and  philosophical  conceptions,  and  every  industry  or 
characteristic  act  of  life  in  pantomime  and  gesture,  we 
have  in  the  dance  of  the  modern  ballroom  only  a  degen- 
erate relict,  with  at  best  but  a  very  insignificant  culture 
value,  and  too  often  stained  with  bad  associations.  This 
is  most  unfortunate  for  youth,  and  for  their  sake  a  work 
of  rescue  and  revival  is  greatly  needed ;  for  it  is  perhaps, 
not  excepting  even  music,  the  completest  language  of  the 
emotions  and  can  be  made  one  of  the  best  schools  of  sen- 
timent and  even  will,  inculcating  good  states  of  mind  and 
exorcising  bad  ones  as  few  other  agencies  have  power  to 
do.  Right  dancing  can  cadence  the  very  soul,  give  ner- 
vous poise  and  control,  bring  harmony  between  basal  and 
finer  muscles,  and  also  between  feeling  and  intellect, 
body  and  mind.  It  can  serve  both  as  an  awakener  and 
a  test  of  intelligence,  predispose  the  heart  against  vice, 
and  turn  the  springs  of  character  toward  virtue.  That 
its  present  decadent  forms,  for  those  too  devitalized  to 
dance  aright,  can  be  demoralizing,  we  know  in  this  day 
too  well,  although  even  questionable  dances  may  some- 
times work  off  vicious  propensities  in  ways  more  harm- 
less than  those  in  which  they  would  otherwise  fiad  vent. 

90 


PLAY,  SPORTS,  AND  GAMES 

Its  utilization  for  and  influence  on  the  insane  would  be 
another  interesting  chapter. 

Very  interesting  scientifically  and  suggestive  practi- 
cally is  another  correspondence  which  I  believe  to  be 
new,  between  the  mode  of  spontaneous  activity  in  youth 
and  that  of  labor  in  the  early  history  of  the  race.  One 
of  the  most  marked  distinctions  between  savage  and 
civilized  races  is  in  the  longer  rhythm  of  work  and  relax- 
ation. The  former  are  idle  and  lazy  for  days,  weeks, 
and  perhaps  months,  and  then  put  forth  intense  and  pro- 
longed effort  in  dance,  himt,  warfare,  migration,  or 
construction,  sometimes  dispensing  with  sleep  and  mani- 
festing remarkable  endurance.  As  civilization  and  spe- 
cialization advance,  hours  become  regular.  The  cultured 
man  is  less  desultory  in  all  his  habits,  from  eating  and 
sleeping  to  performing  social  and  religious  duties,  al- 
though he  may  put  forth  no  more  aggregate  energy  in  a 
year  than  the  savage.  Women  are  schooled  to  regular 
work  long  before  men,  and  the  difficulty  of  imposing 
civilization  upon  low  races  is  compared  by  Biicher^  to 
that  of  training  a  cat  to  work  when  harnessed  to  a  dog- 
cart. It  is  not  dread  of  fatigue  but  of  the  monotony  of 
method  that  makes  them  hate  labor.  The  effort  of  sav- 
ages is  more  intense  and  their  periods  of  rest  more  pro- 
longed and  inert.  Darwin  thinks  all  vital  function 
bred  to  go  in  periods,  as  vertebrates  are  descended  from 
a  tidal  ascidian.-  There  is  indeed  much  that  suggests  some 
other  irregular  rhythm  more  or  less  independent  of  day 
and  night,  and  perhaps  sexual  in  its  nature,  but  not  lunar, 
and  for  males.  This  mode  of  life  not  only  preceded  the 
industrial  and  commercial  period  of  which  regularity  is  a 

1  Arbeit  und  Rythmus.     Triibner,  Leipzig,  1896. 

2  Descent  of  Man.     D.  Appleton  and  Co.,  1872,  vol.  1,  chap,  vi,  p.  204 
et  seq. 

91 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

prime  condition,  but  it  lasted  indefinitely  longer  than  the 
latter  has  yet  existed ;  during  this  early  time  great  exer- 
tion, sometimes  to  the  point  of  utter  exhaustion  and  col- 
lapse, alternated  with  seasons  of  almost  vegetative  exist- 
ence. We  see  abundant  traces  of  this  psychosis  in  tLe 
muscle  habits  of  adolescents,  and,  I  think,  in  student  and 
particularly  in  college  life,  which  can  enforce  regularity 
only  to  a  limited  extent.  This  is  not  reversion,  but  partly 
an  expression  of  the  nature  and  perhaps  the  needs  of  this 
stage  of  immaturity,  and  partly  the  same  instinct  of  re- 
volt against  uniformity  imposed  from  without,  which  rob 
life  of  variety  and  extinguish  the  spirit  of  adventure  and 
untrammeled  freedom,  and  make  the  savage  hard  to  break 
to  the  harness  of  civilization.  The  hunger  for  fatigue, 
too,  can  become  a  veritable  passion  and  is  quite  distinct 
from  either  the  impulse  for  activity  for  its  own  sake  or 
the  desire  of  achievement.  To  shout  and  put  forth  the 
utmost  possible  strength  in  crude  ways  is  an  erethic 
intoxication  at  a  stage  when  every  tissue  can  become 
erectile  and  seems,  like  the  crying  of  infants,  to  have  a 
legitimate  function  in  causing  tension  and  flushing,  en- 
larging the  caliber  of  blood  vessels,  and  forcing  the  blood 
perhaps  even  to  the  point  of  extravasation  to  irrigate 
newly  growing  fibers,  cells,  and  organs  which  atrophy 
if  not  thus  fed.  When  maturity  is  complete  this  need 
abates.  If  this  be  correct,  the  phenomenon  of  second 
breath,  so  characteristic  of  adolescence,  and  one  factor  in 
the  inebriate's  propensity,  is  an  ontogenetic  expression 
of  a  rhythm  trait  of  a  long  racial  period.  Y^outh  needs 
overexertion  to  compensate  for  underexertion,  to  under- 
sleep  in  order  to  offset  oversleep  at  times.  This  seems  to 
be  nature's  provision  to  expand  in  all  directions  its  possi- 
bilities of  the  body  and  soul  in  this  plastic  period  when, 
without  this  occasional  excess,  powers  would  atrophy  or 

92 


PLAY,  SPORTS,  AND  GAMES 

suffer  arrest  for  want  of  use,  or  larger  possibilities  would 
not  be  realized  without  this  regimen  peculiar  to  nascent 
periods.     This  is  treated  more  fully  elsewhere. 

Perhaps  next  to  dancing  in  phyletic  motivation  come 
personal  conflicts,  such  as  wrestling,  fighting,  boxing, 
dueling,  and  in  some  sense,  hunting.  The  animal  world 
is  full  of  struggle  for  survival,  and  primitive  warfare  is 
a  wager  of  battle,  of  personal  combat  of  foes  contesting 
eye  to  eye  and  hand  to  hand,  where  victory  of  one  is 
the  defeat  and  perhaps  death  of  the  other,  and  where  life 
is  often  staked  against  life.  In  its  more  brutal  forms 
we  see  one  of  the  most  degrading  of  all  the  aspects  of 
human  nature.  Burk  ^  has  shown  how  the  most  bestial 
of  these  instincts  survive  and  crop  out  irresistibly  in  boy- 
hood, where  fights  are  often  engaged  in  with  desperate 
abandon.  Noses  are  bitten,  ears  torn,  sensitive  places 
kicked,  hair  pulled,  arms  twisted,  the  head  stamped  on 
and  pounded  on  stones,  fingers  twisted,  and  hoodlums 
sometimes  deliberately  try  to  strangle,  gouge  out  an  eye, 
pull  off  an  ear,  pull  out  the  tongue,  break  teeth,  nose,  or 
bones,  or  dislocate  jaAvs  or  other  joints,  wring  the  neck, 
bite  off  a  lip,  and  torture  in  utterly  nameless  ways.  In  un- 
restrained anger,  man  becomes  a  demon  in  love  w^ith  the 
blood  of  his  victim.  The  face  is  distorted,  and  there  are 
yells,  oaths,  animal  snorts  and  grunts,  cries,  and  then  ex- 
ultant laughter  at  pain,  and  each  is  bruised,  dirty,  dishev- 
eled and  panting  w^ith  exhaustion.  For  coarser  natures, 
the  spectacle  of  such  conflicts  has  an  intense  attraction, 
while  some  morbid  souls  are  scarred  by  a  distinct  phobia 
for  everything  suggestive  of  even  lower  degrees  of  opposi- 
tion.    These  instincts,  more  or  less  developed  in  boyhood. 


1  Teasing   and   Bullying.     Pedagogical   Seminary,   April,    1897,    vol. 
4,  pp.  336-371. 

93 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

are  repressed  in  normal  cases  before  strength  and  skill 
are  sufficiently  developed  to  inflict  serious  bodily  in- 
jury, while  without  the  reductives  that  orthogenetic 
growth  brings  they  become  criminal.  Repulsive  as  are 
these  grosser  and  animal  manifestations  of  anger,  its  im- 
pulsion can  not  and  should  not  be  eliminated,  but  its  ex- 
pression transformed  and  directed  toward  evils  that  need 
all  its  antagonism.  To  be  angry  aright  is  a  good  part 
of  moral  education,  and  non-resistance  under  all  provo- 
cations is  unmanly,  craven,  and  cowardly.^  An  able- 
bodied  young  man,  who  can  not  fight  physically,  can 
hardly  have  a  high  and  true  sense  of  honor,  and  is  gen- 
erally a  milk-sop,  a  lady-boy,  or  a  sneak.  He  lacks 
virility,  his  masculinity  does  not  ring  true,  his  hon- 
esty can  not  be  sound  to  the  core.  Hence,  instead  of 
eradicating  this  instinct,  one  of  the  great  problems  of 
physical  and  moral  pedagogy  is  rightly  to  temper  and 
direct  it. 

Sparta  sedulously  cultivated  it  in  boys;  and  in  the 
great  English  schools,  where  for  generations  it  has  been 
more  or  less  tacitly  recognized,  it  is  regulated  by  custom, 
and  their  literature  and  traditions  abound  in  illustra- 
tions of  its  man-making  and  often  transforming  influ- 
ence in  ways  well  appreciated  by  Hughes  and  Arnold. 
It  makes  against  degeneration,  the  essential  feature  of 
which  is  weakening  of  will  and  loss  of  honor.  Real  vir- 
tue requires  enemies,  and  women  and  efl'eminate  and 
old  men  want  placid,  comfortable  peace,  while  a  real  man 
rejoices  in  noble  strife  which  sanctifies  all  great  causes, 
casts  out  fear,  and  is  the  chief  school  of  courage.  Bad  as 
is  overpugnacity,  a  scrapping  boy  is  better  than  one  who 


'  See  my  Study  of  Anger.     American  Journal  of  Psychology,  July, 
1899,  vol.  10,  pp.  516-591. 

94 


PLAY,  SPORTS,  AND   GAMES 

funks  a  fight,  and  I  have  no  patience  with  the  sentimental- 
ity that  would  here  ' '  pour  out  the  child  with  the  bath, ' ' 
but  would  have  every  healthy  boy  taught  boxing  at  ado- 
lescence if  not  before.  The  prize-ring  is  degrading  and 
brutal,  but  in  lieu  of  better  illustrations  of  the  spirit  of 
personal  contest  I  would  interest  a  certain  class  of  boys 
in  it  and  try  to  devise  modes  of  pedagogic  utilization  of 
the  immense  store  of  interest  it  generates.  Like  dancing 
it  should  be  rescued  from  its  evil  associations,  and  its 
educational  force  put  to  do  moral  work,  even  though  it 
be  by  way  of  individual  prescriptions  for  specific  defects 
of  character.  At  its  best,  it  is  indeed  a  manly  art,  a  su- 
perb school  for  quickness  of  eye  and  hand,  decision, 
force  of  will,  and  self-control.  The  moment  this  is  lost 
stinging  punishment  follows.  Hence  it  is  the  surest  of 
all  cures  for  excessive  irascibility  and  has  been  found  to 
have  a  most  beneficent  effect  upon  a  peevish  or  unmanly 
disposition.  It  has  no  mean  theoretic  side,  of  rules,  kinds 
of  blow  and  counters,  arts  of  drawing  out  and  tiring  an 
opponent,  hindering  but  not  injuring  him,  defensive  and 
offensive  tactics,  etc.,  and  it  addresses  chiefly  the  funda- 
mental muscles  in  both  training  and  conflict.  I  do  not 
underestimate  the  many  and  great  difficulties  of  proper 
purgation,  but  I  know  from  both  personal  practise  and 
observation  that  they  are  not  unconquerable. 

This  form  of  personal  conflict  is  better  than  dueling 
even  in  its  comparatively  harmless  German  student  form, 
although  this  has  been  warmly  defended  by  Jacob 
Grimm,  Bismarck,  and  Treitschke,  while  Paulsen,  Pro- 
fessor of  Philosophy  and  Pedagogy,  and  Schrempf,  of 
Theology,  have  pronounced  it  but  a  slight  evil,  and  sev- 
eral Americans  have  thought  it  better  than  hazing,  which 
it  makes  impossible.  The  dark  side  of  dueling  is  seen  in 
the  hypertrophied  sense  of  honor  w^hich  under  the  code 

95 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

of  the  corps  becomes  an  intricate  and  fantastic  thing, 
prompting,  according  to  Ziegler,^  a  club  of  sixteen 
students  to  fight  over  two  hundred  duels  in  four  weeks 
in  Jena  early  in  this  century.  It  is  prone  to  degenerate 
to  an  artificial  etiquette  demanding  satisfaction  for 
slight  and  unintended  offenses.  Although  this  profess- 
or, who  had  his  own  face  scarred  on  the  mensur, 
pleaded  for  a  student  court  of  honor,  with  power  to 
brand  acts  as  infamous  and  even  to  expel  students,  on 
the  ground  that  honor  had  grown  more  inward,  the 
traditions  in  favor  of  dueling  were  too  strong.  The  duel 
had  a  religious  romantic  origin  as  revealing  God's  judg- 
ment, and  means  that  the  victim  of  an  insult  is  ready 
to  stake  bod}^  or  even  life,  and  this  is  still  its  ideal  side. 
Anachronism  as  it  now  is  and  degenerating  readily  to 
sport  or  spectacle,  overpunishing  what  is  often  mere 
awkwardness  or  ignorance,  it  still  impresses  a  certain 
sense  of  responsibility  for  conduct  and  gives  some  physi- 
cal training,  slight  and  specialized  though  it  be.  The 
code  is  conventional,  drawn  directly  from  old  French 
military  life,  and  is  not  true  to  the  line  that  separates 
real  honor  from  dishonor,  deliberate  insult  that  wounds 
normal  self-respect  from  injury  fancied  by  oversensi- 
tiveness  or  feigned  by  arrogance ;  so  that  in  its  present 
form  it  is  not  the  best  safeguard  of  the  sacred  shrine 
of  personality  against  invasion  of  its  rights.  If,  as  is 
claimed,  it  is  some  diversion  from  or  fortification  against 
corrosive  sensuality,  it  has  generally  allied  itself  with 
excessive  beer-drinking.  Fencing,  while  an  art  suscep- 
tible of  high  development  and  valuable  for  both  pose 
and  poise  and  requiring  great  quickness  of  eye,  arm, 

1  Der  deutsche  Student  am  Ende  des  19  Jalirhunderts,  6th  ed., 
Goschen,  Leipzig,  1896.  See  also  H.  D.  Sheldon:  History  and  Pedagogy 
of  American  Student  Societies,  New  York,  1901,  p.  31  et  seq. 

96 


PLAY,  SPORTS,  AND   GAMES 

and  wrist,  is  unilateral  and  robbed  of  the  zest  of  inflict- 
ing real  pain  on  an  antagonist. 

Bushido,^  which  means  military-knightly  ways,  des- 
ignates the  Japanese  conception  of  honor  in  behavior 
and  in  fighting.  The  youth  is  inspired  by  the  ideal  of 
Tom  Brown  "  to  leave  behind  him  the  name  of  a  fel- 
low who  never  bullied  a  little  boy  or  turned  his  back 
on  a  big  one."  It  expresses  the  race  ideal  of  justice, 
patriotism,  and  the  duty  of  living  aright  and  dying 
nobly.  It  means  also  sympathy,  pity,  and  love,  for  only 
the  bravest  can  be  the  tenderest,  and  those  most  in  love 
are  most  daring,  and  it  includes  politeness  and  the  art 
of  poetry.  Honor  is  a  sense  of  personal  dignity  and 
worth,  so  the  hushi  is  truthful  without  an  oath.  At  the 
tender  age  of  five  the  samurai  is  given  a  real  sword,  and 
this  gives  self-respect  and  responsibility.  At  fifteen, 
two  sharp  and  artistic  ones,  long  and  short,  are  given 
him,  which  must  be  his  companions  for  life.  They 
were  made  by  a  smith  whose  shop  is  a  sanctuary  and  who 
begins  his  work  with  prayer.  They  have  the  finest 
hilts  and  scabbards,  and  are  besung  as  invested  with 
a  charm  or  spell,  and  symbolic  of  loyalty  and  self- 
control,  for  they  must  never  be  drawn  lightly.  He  is 
taught  fencing,  archery,  horsemanship,  tactics,  the  spear, 
ethics  and  literature,  anatomy,  for  offense  and  defense; 
he  must  be  indifferent  to  money,  hold  his  life  cheap 
beside  honor,  and  die  if  it  is  gone.  This  chivalry  is 
called  the  soul  of  Japan,  and  if  it  fades  life  is  vulgar- 
ized.    It  is  a  code  of  ethics  and  physical  training. 

Football  is  a  magnificent  game  if  played  on  honor. 
An  English  tennis  champion  was  lately  playipg  a  rub- 
ber game  with  the  American  champion.    They  were  even 

1  Bushido:  The  Soul  of  Japan.     An  exposition  of  Japanese  thought, 
by  Inazo  Nitob6.     New  York,  1905,  pp.  203  et  seq. 

97 


YOUTH:    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

and  near  the  end  when  the  American  made  a  bad  fluke 
which  would  have  lost  this  country  its  championship. 
The  English  player,  scorning  to  win  on  an  accident, 
intentionally  made  a  similar  mistake  that  the  best  man 
might  win.  The  chief  evil  of  modern  American  foot- 
ball which  now  threatens  its  suppression  in  some  col- 
leges is  the  lust  to  win  at  any  price,  and  results  in 
tricks  and  secret  practise.  These  sneaky  methods  impair 
the  sentiment  of  honor  which  is  the  best  and  most  po- 
tent of  all  the  moral  safeguards  of  youth,  so  that  a 
young  man  can  not  be  a  true  gentleman  on  the  gridiron. 
This  ethical  degeneration  is  far  worse  than  all  the 
bruises,  sprains,  broken  bones  and  even  deaths  it  causes. 
Wrestling  is  a  form  of  personal  encounter  which  in 
antiquity  reached  a  high  development,  and  which,  al- 
though now  more  known  and  practised  as  athletics  of 
the  body  than  of  the  soul,  has  certain  special  disciplinary 
capacities  in  its  various  forms.  It  represents  the  most 
primitive  type  of  the  struggle  of  unarmed  and  unpro- 
tected man  with  man.  Purged  of  its  barbarities,  and  in 
its  Greco-Roman  form  and  properly  subject  to  rules, 
it  cultivates  more  kinds  of  movements  than  any  other 
form — for  limbs,  trunk,  neck,  hand,  foot,  and  all  in  the 
upright  and  in  every  prone  position.  It,  too,  has  its 
manual  of  feints,  holds,  tricks,  and  specialties,  and  calls 
out  wariness,  quickness,  strength,  and  shiftiness.  Vic- 
tory need  involve  no  cruelty  or  even  pain  to  the  van- 
quished. The  very  closeness  of  body  to  body,  em- 
phasizing flexor  rather  than  extensor  arm  muscles,  im- 
parts to  it  a  peculiar  tone,  gives  it  a  vast  variety  of 
possible  activities,  developing  many  alternatives  at  every 
stage,  and  tempts  to  many  undiscovered  forms  of  per- 
mament  mayhem.  Its  struggle  is  usually  longer  and  less 
interrupted  by  pauses  than  pugilism,  and  its  situations 

98 


PLAY,  SPORTS,  AND  GAMES 

and  conclusions  often  develop  slowly,  so  that  all  in  all, 
its  character  among  contests  is  unique.  As  a  school 
of  posture  for  art,  its  varieties  are  extremely  manifold 
and  by  no  means  developed,  for  it  contains  every  kind 
of  emphasis  of  every  part  and  calls  out  every  muscle 
group  and  attitude  of  the  human  body ;  hence  its  train- 
ing is  most  generic  and  least  specialized,  and  victories 
have  been  won  by  very  many  kinds  of  excellence. 

Perhaps  nothing  is  more  opposed  to  the  idea  of  a 
gentleman  than  the  sceva  animi  tempestas  ^  of  anger. 
A  testy,  quarrelsome,  mucky  humor  is  antisocial,  and 
an  outburst  of  rage  is  repulsive.  Even  non-resistance, 
turning  the  other  cheek,  has  its  victories  and  may  be  a 
method  of  moral  combat.  A  strong  temper  well  con- 
trolled and  kept  in  leash  makes  a  kinetic  character;  but 
in  view  of  bullying,  unfair  play,  cruel  injustice  to  the 
weak  and  defenseless,  of  outrageous  wrong  that  the  law 
can  not  reach,  patience  and  forbearance  may  cease  to 
be  virtues,  and  summary  redress  may  have  a  distinct  ad- 
vantage to  the  ethical  nature  of  man  and  to  social  order, 
and  the  strenuous  soul  must  fight  or  grow  stagnant  or 
flabby.  If  too  repressed,  righteous  indignation  may 
turn  to  sourness  and  sulks,  and  the  disposition  be 
spoiled.  Hence  the  relief  and  exhilaration  of  an  out- 
break that  often  clears  the  psychic  atmosphere  like  a 
thunderstorm,  and  gives  the  "  peace  that  passeth  under- 
standing "  so  often  dilated  on  by  our  correspondents. 
Rather  than  the  abject  fear  of  making  enemies  what- 
ever the  provocation,  I  would  praise  those  whose  best 
title  of  honor  is  the  kind  of  enemies  they  make.  Better 
even  an  occasional  nose  dented  by  a  fist,  a  broken  bone, 
a  rapier-scarred  face,  or  even  sometimes  the  sacrifice  of 

1  Fierce  tempest  of  the  soul. 

99 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

the  life  of  one  of  our  best  academic  youth  than  stagna- 
tion, general  cynicism  and  censoriousness,  bodily  and 
psychic  cowardice,  and  moral  corruption,  if  this  indeed 
be,  as  it  sometimes  is,  its  real  alternative. 

So  closely  are  love  and  war  connected  that  not  only 
is  individual  pugnacity  greatly  increased  at  the  period 
of  sexual  maturity,  when  animals  acquire  or  develop 
horns,  fangs,  claws,  spurs,  and  weapons  of  offense  and 
defense,  but  a  new  spirit  of  organization  arises  which 
makes  teams  possible  or  more  permanent.  Football, 
baseball,  cricket,  etc.,  and  even  boating  can  become 
schools  of  mental  and  moral  training.  First,  the  rules 
of  the  game  are  often  intricate,  and  to  master  and  ob- 
serve them  effectively  is  no  mean  training  for  the  mind 
in  controlling  the  body.  These  are  steadily  being  re- 
vised and  improved,  and  the  reasons  for  each  detail  of 
inner  construction  and  conduct  of  the  game  require 
experience  and  insight  into  human  nature.  Then  the 
subordination  of  each  member  to  the  whole  and  to  a 
leader  cultivates  the  social  and  cooperative  instincts, 
while  the  honor  of  the  school,  college,  or  city,  which  each 
team  represents,  is  confided  to  each  and  all.  Group 
loyalty  in  Anglo-Saxon  games,  which  shows  such  a 
marked  increment  in  coordination  and  self-subordina- 
tion at  the  dawn  of  puberty  as  to  constitute  a  distinct 
change  in  the  character  of  sports  at  this  age,  can  be  so 
utilized  as  to  develop  a  spirit  of  service  and  devotion 
not  only  to  town,  country,  and  race,  but  to  God  and  the 
church.  Self  must  be  merged  and  a  sportsmanlike 
spirit  cultivated  that  prefers  defeat  to  tricks  and  secret 
practise,  and  a  clean  game  to  the  applause  of  rooters 
and  fans,  intent  only  on  victory,  however  won.  The 
long,  hard  fight  against  professionalism  that  brings  in 
husky  muckers,  who  by  every  rule  of  true  courtesy  and 

100 


PLAY,  SPORTS,  AND   GAMES 

chivalry  belong  outside  academic  circles,  scrapping  and 
underhand  advantages,  is  a  sad  comment  on  the  char- 
acter and  spirit  of  these  games,  and  eliminates  the  best 
of  their  educational  advantages.  The  necessity  of  inter- 
vention, which  has  imposed  such  great  burdens  on  facul- 
ties and  brought  so  much  friction  with  the  frenzy  of 
scholastic  sentiment  in  the  hot  stage  of  seasonal  enthu- 
siasms, when  fanned  to  a  white  heat  by  the  excessive 
interest  of  friends  and  patrons  and  the  injurious  ex- 
ploitation of  the  press,  bears  sad  testimony  to  the 
strength  and  persistence  of  warlike  instincts  from  our 
heredity.  But  even  thus  the  good  far  predominates. 
The  elective  system  has  destroyed  the  class  games,  and 
our  institutions  have  no  luiits  like  the  English  colleges  to 
be  pitted  against  each  other,  and  so,  as  colleges  grow, 
an  ever  smaller  percentage  of  students  obtain  the  benefit 
of  practise  on  the  teams,  w^hile  electioneering  methods 
often  place  second-best  men  in  place  of  the  best.  But 
both  students  and  teachers  are  slowly  learning  wisdom 
in  the  dear  school  of  experience.  On  the  whole,  there  is 
less  license  in  "  breaking  training  "  and  in  celebrating 
victories,  and  even  at  their  worst,  good  probably  pre- 
dominates, while  the  progress  of  recent  years  bids  us 
hope. 

Finally,  military  ideals  and  methods  of  psycho- 
physical education  are  helpful  regulations  of  the  ap- 
petite for  combat,  and  on  the  whole  more  wholesome 
and  robust  than  those  which  are  merely  esthetic.  March- 
ing in  step  gives  proper  and  uniform  movement  of  legs, 
arms,  and  carriage  of  body;  the  manual  of  arms,  with 
evolution  and  involution  of  figures  in  the  ranks,  gives 
each  a  corporate  feeling  of  membership,  and  involves 
care  of  personal  appearance  and  accouterments,  while 
the  uniform  levels  social  distinction  in  dress.     For  the 

101 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

French  and  Italian  and  especially  the  German  and 
Russian  adolescent  of  the  lower  classes,  the  two  or  three 
years  of  compulsory  military  service  is  often  compared 
to  an  academic  course,  and  the  army  is  called,  not  with- 
out some  justification,  the  poor  man's  university.  It 
gives  severe  drill,  strict  discipline,  good  and  regular 
hours,  plain  but  wholesome  fare  and  out-of-door  exer- 
cise, exposure,  travel,  habits  of  neatness,  many  useful 
knacks  and  devices,  tournaments  and  mimic  or  play 
battles;  these,  apart  from  its  other  functions,  make  this 
system  a  great  promoter  of  national  health  and  intelli- 
gence. Naval  schools  for  midshipmen,  who  serve  before 
the  mast,  schools  on  board  ship  that  visit  a  wide  curricu- 
lum of  ports  each  year,  cavalry  schools,  where  each  boy 
is  given  a  horse  to  care  for,  study  and  train,  artillery 
courses  and  even  an  army  drill-master  in  an  academy, 
or  uniform,  and  a  few  exterior  features  of  soldierly  life, 
all  give  a  distinct  character  to  the  spirit  of  any  in- 
stitution. The  very  fancy  of  being  in  any  sense  a 
soldier  opens  up  a  new  range  of  interests  too  seldom 
utilized ;  and  tactics,  army  life  and  service,  military  his- 
tory, battles,  patriotism,  the  flag,  and  duties  to  country, 
should  always  erect  a  new  standard  of  honor.  Youth 
should  embrace  every  opportunity  that  offers  in  this  line, 
and  instruction  should  greatly  increase  the  intellectual 
opportunities  created  by  every  interest  in  warfare.  It 
would  be  easy  to  create  pregnant  courses  on  how  sol- 
diers down  the  course  of  history  have  lived,  thought, 
felt,  fought,  and  died,  how  great  battles  were  won  and 
what  causes  triumphed  in  them,  and  to  generalize  many 
of  the  best  things  taught  in  detail  in  the  best  schools 
of  war  in  different  grades  and  lands. 

A  subtle  but  potent  intersexual  influence  is  among 
the  strongest  factors  of  all  adolescent  sport.    Male  birds 

102 


PLAY,  SPORTS,  AND  GAMES 

and  beasts  show  off  their  charms  of  beauty  and  accom- 
plishment in  many  a  liturgy  of  love  antics  in  the 
presence  of  the  female.  This  instinct  seems  somehow 
continuous  with  the  growth  of  ornaments  in  the  mating 
season.  Song,  tumbling,  balking,  mock  fights,  etc.,  are 
forms  of  animal  courtship.  The  boy  who  turns  cart- 
wheels past  the  home  of  the  girl  of  his  fancy,  is  brilliant, 
brave,  witty,  erect,  strong  in  her  presence,  and  elsewhere 
dull  and  commonplace  enough,  illustrates  the  same  prin- 
ciple. The  true  cake-walk  as  seen  in  the  South  is  pre- 
haps  the  purest  expression  of  this  impulse  to  courtship 
antics  seen  in  man,  but  its  irradiations  are  many  and 
pervasive.  The  presence  of  the  fair  sex  gives  tonicity 
to  youth's  muscles  and  tension  to  his  arteries  to  a 
degree  of  which  he  is  rarely  conscious.  Defeat  in  all 
contests  is  more  humiliating  and  victory  more  glorious 
thereby.  Each  sex  is  constantly  passing  the  examination 
of  the  other,  and  each  judges  the  other  by  standards  dif- 
ferent from  its  own.  Alas  for  the  young  people  who  are 
not  different  with  the  other  sex  from  what  they  are  with 
their  own ! — and  some  are  transformed  into  different  be- 
ings. Achievement  proclaims  ability  to  support,  defend, 
bring  credit  and  even  fame  to  the  object  of  future  choice, 
and  no  good  point  is  lost.  Physical  force  and  skill,  and 
above  all,  victory  and  glory,  make  a  hero  and  invest  him 
with  a  romantic  glamour,  which,  even  though  concealed 
by  conventionality  or  etiquette,  is  profoundly  felt  and 
makes  the  winner  more  or  less  irresistible.  The  applause 
of  men  and  of  mates  is  sweet  and  even  intoxicating,  but 
that  of  ladies  is  ravishing.  By  universal  acclaim  the  fair 
belong  to  the  brave,  strong,  and  victorious.  This  stimu- 
lus is  wholesome  and  refining.  As  is  shown  later,  a 
bashful  youth  often  selects  a  maiden  onlooker  and  is 
sometimes  quite  unconsciously  dominated  in  his  every 
8  103 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

movement  by  a  sense  of  lier  presence,  stranger  and  ap- 
parently unnoticed  though  she  be,  although  in  the  intel- 
lectual work  of  coeducation  girls  are  most  influenced 
thus.  In  athletics  this  motive  makes  for  refinement  and 
good  form.  The  ideal  knight,  however  fierce  and  terri- 
ble, must  not  be  brutal,  but  show  capacity  for  fine  feeling, 
tenderness,  magnanimity,  and  forbearance.  Evolution- 
ists tell  us  that  woman  has  domesticated  and  educated 
savage  man  and  taught  him  all  his  virtues  by  exercising 
her  royal  prerogative  of  selecting  in  her  mate  just  those 
qualities  that  pleased  her  for  transmission  to  future 
generations  and  eliminating  others  distasteful  to  her. 
If  so,  she  is  still  engaged  in  this  work  as  much  as  ever, 
and  in  his  dull,  slow  way  man  feels  that  her  presence 
enforces  her  standards,  abhorrent  though  it  would  be  to 
him  to  compromise  in  one  iota  his  masculinity.  Most 
plays  and  games  in  which  both  sexes  participate  have 
some  of  the  advantages  with  some  of  the  disadvantages 
of  coeducation.  Where  both  are  partners  rather  than 
antagonists,  there  is  less  eviration.  A  gallant  man 
would  do  his  best  to  help,  but  his  worst  not  to  beat  a 
lady.  Thus,  in  general,  the  latter  performs  her  best 
service  in  her  true  role  of  sympathetic  spectator  rather 
than  as  fellow  player,  and  is  now  an  important  factor 
in  the  physical  education  of  adolescents. 

How  pervasive  this  femininity  is,  which  is  slowly 
transforming  our  schools,  is  strikingly  seen  in  the  church. 
Gulick  holds  that  the  reason  why  only  some  seven  per 
cent  of  the  young  men  of  the  country  are  in  the  churches, 
while  most  members  and  workers  are  women,  is  that  the 
qualities  demanded  are  the  feminine  ones  of  love,  rest, 
prayer,  trust,  desire  for  fortitude  to  endure,  a  sense  of 
atonement — traits  not  involving  ideals  that  most  stir 
young  men.    The  church  has  not  yet  learned  to  appeal  to 

104 


PLAY,  SPORTS,  AND  GAMES 

the  more  virile  qualities.  Fielding  Hall  ^  asks  why  Christ 
and  Buddha  alone  of  great  religious  teachers  were  re- 
jected by  their  own  race  and  accepted  elsewhere.  He 
answers  that  these  mild  beliefs  of  peace,  nonresistance, 
and  submission,  rejected  by  virile  warrior  races,  Jews 
and  ancient  Hindus,  were  adopted  where  women  were 
free  and  led  in  these  matters.  Confucianism,  Moham- 
medanism, etc.,  are  virile,  and  so  indigenous,  and  in  such 
forms  of  faith  and  worship  women  have  small  place. 
This  again  suggests  how  the  sex  that  rules  the  heart  con- 
trols men. 

Too  much  can  hardly  be  said  in  favor  of  cold  baths 
and  swimming  at  this  age.  IMarro  -  quotes  Father 
Kneipp,  and  almost  rivals  his  hydrotherapeutic  enthusi- 
asm. Cold  bathing  sends  the  blood  inward  partly  by  the 
cold  which  contracts  the  capillaries  of  the  skin  and 
tissue  immediately  underlying  it,  and  partly  by  the  pres- 
sure of  the  water  over  all  the  dermal  surface,  quickens 
the  activity  of  kidneys,  lungs,  and  digestive  apparatus, 
and  the  reactive  glow  is  the  best  possible  tonic  for  der- 
mal circulation.  It  is  the  best  of  all  gymnastics  for  the 
nonstriated  or  involuntary  muscles  and  for  the  heart 
and  blood  vessels.  This  and  the  removal  of  the  products 
of  excretion  preserve  all  the  important  dermal  func- 
tions which  are  so  easily  and  so  often  impaired  in  modern 
life,  lessen  the  liability  to  skin  diseases,  promote  freshness 
of  complexion;  and  the  moral  effects  of  plunging  into 
cold  and  supporting  the  body  in  deep  water  is  not  in- 
considerable in  strengthening  a  spirit  of  hardihood  and 
reducing  overtenderness  to  sensory  discomforts.  The 
exercise  of  swimming  is  unique  in  that  nearly  all  the 
movements  and  combinations  are  such  as  are  rarely  used 

^  The  Hearts  of  Men.     Macmillan,  1901,  chap.  xxii. 
2  La  Puberty.     Schleicher  Freres,  editeurs,  Paris,  1902. 

105 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

otherwise,  and  are  perhaps  in  a  sense  ancestral  and  lib- 
eral rather  than  directly  preparatory  for  future  avoca- 
tions. Its  stimulus  for  heart  and  lungs  is,  by  general 
consent  of  all  writers  upon  the  subject,  most  wholesome 
and  beneficial.  Nothing  so  directly  or  quickly  reduces  to 
the  lowest  point  the  plethora  of  the  sex  organs.  The 
very  absence  of  clothes  and  running  on  the  beach  is  ex- 
hilarating and  gives  a  sense  of  freedom.  Where  prac- 
ticable it  is  well  to  dispense  with  bathing  suits,  even  the 
scantiest.  The  warm  bath  tub  is  enfeebling  and  degen- 
erative, despite  the  cold  spray  later,  while  the  free  swim 
in  cold  water  is  most  invigorating. 

Happily,  city  officials,  teachers,  and  sanitarians  are 
now  slowly  realizing  the  great  improvement  in  health 
and  temper  that  comes  from  bathing  and  are  establish- 
ing beach  and  surf,  spray,  floating  and  plunge  summer 
baths  and  swimming  pools;  often  providing  instruction 
even  in  swimming  in  clothes,  undressing  in  the  water, 
treading  water,  and  rescue  work,  free  as  well  as  fee  days, 
bathing  suits,  and,  in  London,  places  for  nude  bathing 
after  dark ;  establishing  time  and  distance  standards  with 
certificates  and  even  prizes;  annexing  toboggan  slides, 
swings,  etc.,  realizing  that  in  both  the  preference  of 
youth  and  in  healthful  and  moral  effects,  probably  noth- 
ing outranks  this  form  of  exercise.  Such  is  its  strange 
fascination  that,  according  to  one  comprehensive  census, 
the  passion  to  get  to  the  water  outranks  all  other  causes 
of  truancy,  and  plays  an  important  part  in  the  motiva- 
tion of  runaways.  In  the  immense  public  establishment 
near  San  Francisco,  provided  by  private  munificence, 
there  are  accommodations  for  all  kinds  of  bathing  in  hot 
and  cold  and  in  various  degrees  of  fresh  and  salt  water, 
in  closed  spaces  and  in  the  open  sea,  for  small  children 
and  adults,  with  many  appliances  and  instructors,  all  in 

106 


PLAY,  SPORTS,  AND  GAiAIES 

one  great  covered  arena  with  seats  in  an  amphitheater 
for  two  thousand  spectators,  and  many  adjuncts  and 
accessories.  So  elsewhere  the  presence  of  visitors  is  now 
often  invited  and  provided  for.  Sometimes  wash-houses 
and  public  laundries  are  annexed.  Open  hours  and 
longer  evenings  and  seasons  are  being  prolonged. 

Prominent  among  the  favorite  games  of  early  pu- 
berty and  the  years  just  before  are  those  that  involve 
passive  motion  and  falling,  like  swinging  in  its  many 
forms,  including  the  May-pole  and  single  rope  varieties. 
Mr.  Lee  reports  that  children  wait  late  in  the  evening 
and  in  cold  weather  for  a  turn  at  a  park  swing.  Psy- 
chologically allied  to  these  are  wheeling  and  skating. 
Places  for  the  latter  are  now  often  provided  by  the  fire 
department,  which  in  many  cities  floods  hundreds  of 
empty  lots.  Ponds  are  cleared  of  snow  and  horse- 
plowed,  perhaps  by  the  park  commission,  which  often 
provides  lights  and  perhaps  ices  the  walks  and  streets  for 
coasting,  erects  shelters,  and  devises  space  economy  for 
as  many  diamonds,  bleachers,  etc.,  as  possible.  Games  of 
hitting,  striking,  and  throwing  balls  and  other  objects, 
hockey,  tennis,  all  the  courts  of  which  are  usually 
crowded,  golf  and  croquet,  and  sometimes  fives,  cricket, 
bowling,  quoits,  curling,  etc.,  have  great  "  thum- 
ogenic  "  or  emotional  power. 

Leg  exercise  has  perhaps  a  higher  value  than  that  of 
any  other  part.  Man  is  by  definition  an  upright  being, 
but  only  after  a  long  apprenticeship.^  Thus  the  hand 
was  freed  from  the  necessity  of  locomotion  and  made 
the  servant  of  the  mind.  Locomotion  overcomes  the 
tendency  to  sedentary  habits  in  modern  schools  and  life, 
and  helps  the  mind  to  helpful  action,  so  that  a  peri- 

*  See  A.  W.  Trettien.     Creeping  and  Walking.     American  Journal  of 
Psychology,  October,  1900,  vol.  12,  pp.  1-57. 

107 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

patetic  philosophy  is  more  normal  than  that  of  the  easy 
chair  and  the  study  lamp.  Ilill-climbing  is  unexcelled  as 
a  stimulus  at  once  of  heart,  lungs,  and  blood.  If  Hip- 
pocrates is  right,  inspiration  is  possible  only  on  a  moun- 
tain-top. Walking,  running,  dancing,  skating,  coasting 
are  also  alterative  and  regulative  of  sex,  and  there  is  a 
deep  and  close  though  not  yet  fully  explained  reci- 
procity between  the  two.  Arm  work  is  relatively  too 
prominent  a  feature  in  gymnasia.  Those  who  lead  ex- 
cessively sedentary  lives  are  prone  to  be  turbulent  and 
extreme  in  both  passion  and  opinion,  as  witness  the  oft- 
adduced  revolutionary  disposition  of  cobblers. 

The  play  problem  is  now  fairly  open  and  is  vast  in 
its  relation  to  many  other  things.  Roof  playgrounds, 
recreation  piers,  schoolyards  and  even  school-buildings, 
open  before  and  after  school  hours;  excursions  and  out- 
ings of  many  kinds  and  with  many  purposes,  which  seem 
to  distinctly  augment  growth;  occupation  during  the 
long  vacation  when,  beginning  with  spring,  most  juve- 
nile crime  is  committed;  theatricals,  which  according  to 
some  police  testimony  lessen  the  number  of  juvenile  de- 
linquents ;  boys '  clubs  with  more  or  less  self-government 
of  the  George  Junior  Republic  and  other  types,  treated 
in  another  chapter ;  nature-study ;  the  distinctly  different 
needs  and  propensities  of  both  good  and  evil  in  different 
nationalities;  the  advantages  of  playground  fences  and 
exclusion,  their  disciplinary  worth,  and  their  value 
as  resting  places;  the  liability  that  '*  the  boy  without 
a  playground  will  become  the  father  without  a  job  "; 
the  relation  of  play  and  its  slow  transition  to  manual 
and  industrial  education  at  the  savage  age  when  a  boy 
abhors  all  regular  occupation;  the  necessity  of  exciting 
interest,  not  by  what  is  done  for  boys,  but  by  what  they 
do ;  the  adjustment  of  play  to  sex ;  the  determination  of 

108 


PLAY,  SPORTS,  AND  GAIklES 

the  proper  average  age  of  maximal  zest  in  and  good  from 
sand-box,  ring-toss,  bean-bag,  shufQe-board,  peg-top, 
charity,  funeral  play,  prisoner's  base,  hill-dill;  the 
value  and  right  use  of  apparatus,  and  of  rabbits,  pig- 
eons, bees,  and  a  small  menagerie  in  the  playground; 
tan-bark,  clay,  the  proper  alternation  of  excessive  free- 
dom, that  often  turns  boys  stale  through  the  summer, 
with  regulated  activities;  the  disciplined  "  work  of 
play  ' '  and  sedentary  games ;  the  value  of  the  washboard 
in  rubbing  and  of  the  hand  and  knee  exercise  of  scrub- 
bing, which  a  late  writer  would  restore  for  all  girls  with 
clever  and  Greek-named  play  apparatus;  as  well  as  dig- 
ging, shoveling,  tamping,  pick-chopping,  and  hod-carry- 
ing exercises  in  the  form  of  games  for  boys ;  the  relations 
of  women's  clubs,  parents'  clubs,  citizens'  leagues  and 
unions,  etc.,  to  all  this  work — such  are  the  practical 
problems. 

The  playground  movement  encounters  its  chief  ob- 
stacles in  the  most  crowded  and  slum  districts,  where  its 
greatest  value  and  success  was  expected  for  boys  in  the 
early  teens,  who  without  supervision  are  prone  to  commit 
abuses  upon  property  and  upon  younger  children,^  and 
are  so  disorderly  as  to  make  the  place  a  nuisance,  and  who 
resent  the  "  fathering  "  of  the  police,  without,  at  least, 
the  minimum  control  of  a  system  of  permits  and  ex- 
clusions. If  hoodlums  play  at  all,  they  become  infat- 
uated with  baseball  and  football,  especially  punting; 
they  do  not  take  kindly  to  the  soft  large  ball  of  the  Hull 
House  or  the  Civic  League,  and  prefer  at  first  scrub 
games  with  individual  self-exhibition  to  organized  teams. 
Lee  sees  the  ' '  arboreal  instincts  of  our  progenitors  ' '  in 
the  very  strong  propensity  of  boys  from  ten  to  fourteen 

1  Constructive  and  Preventive  Philanthropy,  by  Joseph  Lee.     Mac- 
rr.illan.  New  York,  1902,  chaps,  x  and  xi. 

109 


YOUTH:    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

to  climb  in  any  form;  to  use  traveling  rings,  generally 
occupied  constantly  to  their  fullest  extent;  to  jump 
from  steps  and  catch  a  swinging  trapeze ;  to  go  up  a  lad- 
der and  slide  down  poles ;  to  use  horizontal  and  parallel 
bars.  The  city  boy  has  plenty  of  daring  at  this  age,  but 
does  not  know  W'hat  he  can  do  and  needs  more  super- 
vision than  the  country  youth.  The  young  tough  is  com- 
monly present,  and  though  admired  and  copied  by 
younger  boys,  it  is,  perhaps,  as  often  for  his  heroic  as  for 
his  bad  traits. 

Dr.  Sargent  and  others  have  well  pointed  out  that 
athletics  afford  a  wealth  of  new  and  profitable  topics  for 
discussion  and  enthusiasm  which  helps  against  the  tri- 
viality and  mental  vacuity  into  which  the  intercourse  of 
students  is  prone  to  lapse.  It  prompts  to  discussion  of 
diet  and  regimen.  It  gives  a  new  standard  of  honor.  For 
a  member  of  a  team  to  break  training  would  bring  repro- 
bation and  ostracism,  for  he  is  set  apart  to  win  fame 
for  his  class  or  college.  It  supplies  a  splendid  motive 
against  all  errors  and  vices  that  weaken  or  corrupt  the 
body.  It  is  a  wholesome  vent  for  the  reckless  courage 
that  would  otherwise  go  to  disorder  or  riotous  excess. 
It  supplies  new  and  advantageous  topics  for  composi- 
tions and  for  terse,  vigorous,  and  idiomatic  theme-writ- 
ing, is  a  great  aid  to  discipline,  teaches  respect  for  deeds 
rather  than  words  or  promises,  lays  instructors  under  the 
necessity  of  being  more  interesting,  that  their  w^ork  be 
not  jejune  or  dull  by  contrast;  again  the  business  side 
of  managing  great  contests  has  been  an  admirable  school 
for  training  young  men  to  conduct  great  and  difficult 
financial  operations,  sometimes  involving  $100,000  or 
more,  and  has  thus  prepared  some  for  successful  careers. 
It  furnishes  now  the  closest  of  all  links  between  high 
school  and  college,  reduces  the  number  of  those  phys- 

110 


PLAY,  SPORTS,  AND  GAINIES 

ically  unfit  for  college,  and  should  give  education  gen- 
erally a  more  real  and  vigorous  ideal.  Its  obvious  dan- 
gers are  distraction  from  study  and  overestimation  of  the 
value  of  victory,  especially  in  the  artificial  glamours 
which  the  press  and  the  popular  furor  give  to  great 
games ;  unsportsmanlike  secret  tricks  and  methods,  over- 
emphasis of  combative  and  too  stalwart  impulses,  and  a 
disposition  to  carry  things  by  storm,  by  rush-line  tactics ; 
friction  with  faculties,  and  censure  or  neglect  of  in- 
structors who  take  unpopular  sides  on  hot  questions; 
reaction  toward  license  after  games,  spasmodic  excite- 
ment culminating  in  excessive  strain  for  body  and  mind, 
with  alternations  of  reaction;  "  beefiness  ";  overdevel- 
opment of  the  physical  side  of  life,  and,  in  some  cases, 
premature  features  of  senility  in  later  life,  undergroAvth 
of  the  accessory  motor  parts  and  powers,  and  erethic 
diathesis  that  makes  steady  and  continued  mental  toil 
seem  monotonous,  dull,  and  boresome. 

The  propensity  to  codify  sports,  to  standardize  the 
weight  and  size  of  their  implements,  and  to  reduce  them 
to  what  Spencer  calls  regimentation,  is  an  outcrop  of 
uniformitarianism  that  works  against  that  individuation 
which  is  one  of  the  chief  advantages  of  free  play.  This, 
to  be  sure,  has  developed  old-fashioned  rounders  to 
modern  baseball,  and  this  is  well,  but  it  is  seen  in  the 
elaborate  Draconian  laws,  diplomacy,  judicial  and  leg- 
islative procedures,  concerning  "  eligibility,  transfer, 
and  even  sale  of  players. ' '  In  some  games  international 
conformity  is  gravely  discussed.  Even  where  there  is 
no  tyranny  and  oppression,  good  form  is  steadily  ham- 
pering nature  and  the  free  play  of  personality.  Togs 
and  targets,  balls  and  bats,  rackets  and  oars  are  graded 
or  numbered,  weighed,  and  measured,  and  every  emer- 
gency is  legislated  on  and  judged  by  an  autocratic  mar- 
Ill 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

tinet,  jealous  of  every  prerogative  and  conscious  of  his 
dignity.  All  this  separates  games  from  the  majority 
and  makes  for  specialism  and  professionalism.  Not  only 
this,  but  men  are  coming  to  be  sized  up  for  hereditary 
fitness  in  each  point  and  for  each  sport.  Runners, 
sprinters,  and  jumpers,^  we  are  told,  on  the  basis  of 
many  careful  measurements,  must  be  tall,  with  slender 
bodies,  narrow  but  deep  chests,  longer  legs  than  the 
average  for  their  height,  the  lower  leg  being  especially 
long,  with  small  calf,  ankle,  and  feet,  small  arms,  nar- 
row hips,  with  great  power  of  thoracic  inflation,  and 
thighs  of  small  girth.  Every  player  must  be  studied  by 
trainers  for  ever  finer  individual  adjustments.  His 
dosage  of  work  must  be  kept  well  within  the  limits  of 
his  vitality,  and  be  carefully  adjusted  to  his  recuperative 
power.  His  personal  nascent  periods  must  be  noted,  and 
initial  embarrassment  carefully  weeded  out. 

The  field  of  play  is  as  wide  as  life  and  its  varieties 
far  outnumber  those  of  industries  and  occupations  in  the 
census.  Plays  and  games  differ  in  seasons,  sex^  and  uge. 
McGhee  -  has  shown  on  the  basis  of  some  8,000  children, 
that  running  plaj^s  are  pretty  constant  for  boys  from 
six  to  seventeen,  but  that  girls  are  always  far  behind, 
boys  and  run  steadily  less  from  eight  to  eighteen.  In 
games  of  choice,  boys  showed  a  slight  rise  at  sixteen  and 
seventeen,  and  girls  a  rapid  increase  at  eleven  and  a 
still  more  rapid  one  after  sixteen.  In  games  of  imita- 
tion girls  excel  and  show  a  marked,  as  boys  do  a  slight, 
pubescent  fall.     In  those  games  involving  ri.Yalry__bpys 


'  C.  O.  Bemies.  Physical  Characteristics  of  the  Runner  and  Jumper. 
American  Physical  Education  Review,  September,  1900,  vol.  5,  pp. 
235-245. 

.  A  Study  in  the  Play  Life  of  some  South  Carolina  Children.  Peda- 
gogical Seminary,  December,  1900,  vol.  7,  pp.  459-478. 

112 


PLAY,  SPORTS,  AND   GAMES 

at  first  greatly  excel  girls,  but  are  overtaken  by  the 
latter  in  the  eighteenth  year,  both  showing  marked 
pubescent  increment.  Girls  have  the  largest  number  of 
plays  and  specialize  on  a  few  less  than  boys,  and  most  of 
these  plays  are  of  the  unorganized  kinds.  Johnson  ^  se- 
lected from  a  far  larger  number  440  plays  and  games 
and  arranged  the  best  of  them  in  a  course  by  school 
grades,  from  the  first  to  the  eighth,  inclusive,  and  also 
according  to  their  educational  value  as  teaching  ob- 
servation, reading  and  spelling,  language,  arithmetic, 
geography,  history,  and  biography,  physical  training, 
and  specifically  as  training  legs,  hand,  arm,  back,  waist, 
abdominal  muscles,  chest,  etc.  ]\Iost  of  our  best  games 
are  very  old  and,  Johnson  thinks,  have  deteriorated.  But 
children  are  imitative  and  not  inventive  in  their  games, 
and  easily  learn  new  ones.  Since  the  Berlin  Play  Con- 
gress in  1894  the  sentiment  has  grown  that  these  are  of 
national  importance  and  are  preferable  to  gymnastics 
both  for  soul  and  body.  Hence  we  have  play-schools, 
teachers,  yards,  and  courses,  both  for  their  own  value 
and  also  to  turn  on  the  play  impulse  to  aid  in  the 
drudgery  of  school  work.  Several  have  thought  that  a 
well-rounded,  liberal  education  could  be  given  by  plays 
and  games  alone  on  the  principle  that  there  is  no  profit 
where  there  is  no  pleasure  or  true  euphoria. 

Play  is  motor  poetry.  Too  early  distinction  between 
play  and  work  should  not  be  taught.  Education  per- 
haps should  really  begin  with  directing  childish  sports 
aright.  Froebel  thought  it  the  purest  and  most  spir- 
itual activity  of  childhood,  the  germinal  leaves  of  all 
later  life.  Schooling  that  lacks  recreation  favors  dul- 
ness,  for  play  makes  the  mind  alert  and  its  joy  helps 

1  Education  by  Plays  and  Games.     Pedagogical  Seminary,  October, 
1894,  vol.  3,  pp.  97-133. 

113 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

all  anabolic  activities.  Says  Brinton,  "  the  measure  of 
value  of  work  is  the  amount  of  play  there  is  in  it,  and 
the  measure  of  value  of  play  is  the  amount  of  work 
there  is  in  it."  Johnson  adds  that  ''it  is  doubtful  if 
a  great  man  ever  accomplished  his  life  work  without 
having  reached  a  play  interest  in  it. ' '  Sully  ^  deplores 
the  increase  of  "  agolasts  "  or  "  non-laughers  "  in  our 
times  in  merry  old  England  ^  every  one  played  games ; 
and  laughter,  their  natural  accompaniment,  abounded. 
Queen  Elizabeth's  maids  of  honor  played  tag  with 
hilarity,  but  the  spirit  of  play  with  full  abandon  seems 
taking  its  departure  from  our  overworked,  serious,  and 
tense  age.  To  requote  Stevenson  with  variation,  as 
lahorari,^  so  hidere,  et  jociilari  orare  sunt.'^  Laughter 
itself,  as  Kiihne  long  ago  showed,  is  one  of  the  most 
precious  forms  of  exercise,  relieving  the  arteries  of  their 
tension.^ 

The  antithesis  between  play  and  work  is  generally 
wrongly  conceived,  for  the  difference  is  essentially  in 
the  degree  of  strength  of  the  psycho-physic  motivations. 
The  young  often  do  their  hardest  work  in  play.  With 
interest,  the  most  repellent  tasks  become  pure  sport, 
as  in  the  case  Johnson  reports  of  a  man  who  wanted  a 
pile  of  stone  thrown  into  a  ditch  and,  by  kindling  a  fire  in 
the  ditch  and  pretending  the  stones  were  buckets  of  water, 
the  heavy  and  long-shirked  job  was  done  by  tired  boys 
with  shouting  and  enthusiasm.     Play,  from  one  aspect 

1  An  Essay  on  Laughter.  Longmans,  Green  and  Co.,  London,  1902, 
p.  427  et  seq. 

2  See  Brand's  Popular  Antiquities  of  Great  Britain,  3  vols.,  Lon- 
don, 1883. 

3  To  labor. 

*  To  play  and  to  jest  are  to  pray. 

*  Psychology  of  Tickling,  Laughing,  and  the  Comic,  by  G.  Stanley 
Hall  and  Arthur  Allin.  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  October,  1897, 
vol.  9,  pp.  1-41. 

114 


PLAY,  SPORTS,  AND  GAMES 

of  it,  is  superfluous  energy  over  and  above  what  is  nec- 
essary to  digest,  breathe,  keep  the  heart  and  organic 
processes  going;  and  most  children  who  can  not  play, 
if  they  have  opportunity,  can  neither  study  nor 
work  without  overdrawing  their  resources  of  vitality. 
Bible  psychology  conceives  the  fall  of  man  as  the 
necessity  of  doing  things  without  zest,  and  this  is  not 
only  ever  repeated  but  now  greatly  emphasized  when 
youth  leaves  the  sheltered  paradise  of  play  to  grind  in 
the  mills  of  modern  industrial  civilization.  The  curse  is 
overcome  only  by  those  who  come  to  love  their  tasks 
and  redeem  their  toil  again  to  play.  Play,  hardly  less 
than  work,  can  be  to  utter  exhaustion;  and  because  it 
draws  upon  older  stores  and  strata  of  psycho-physic 
impulsion  its  exhaustion  may  even  more  completely 
drain  our  kinetic  resources,  if  it  is  too  abandoned  or 
prolonged.  Play  can  do  just  as  hard  and  painful  tasks 
as  work,  for  what  we  love  is  done  with  whole  and  un- 
divided personality.  Work,  as  too  often  conceived,  is 
all  body  and  no  soul,  and  makes  for  duality  and  not 
totality.  Its  constraint  is  external,  mechanical,  or  it 
works  by  fear  and  not  love.  Not  effort  but  zestless  en- 
deavor is  the  tragedy  of  life.  Interest  and  play  are 
one  and  inseparable  as  body  and  soul.  Duty  itself  is 
not  adequately  conceived  and  felt  if  it  is  not  pleasure, 
and  is  generally  too  feeble  and  fitful  in  the  young  to 
awaken  much  energy  or  duration  of  action.  Play  is 
from  within  from  congenital  hereditary  impulsion.  It 
is  the  best  of  all  methods  of  organizing  instincts.  Its 
cathartic  or  purgative  function  regulates  irritability, 
which  may  otherwise  be  drained  or  vented  in  wrong 
directions,  exactly  as  Breuer  ^  shows  psychic  traumata 

1  I.   Breuer  and  S.   Freud.      Studien  iiber  Hysterie.     F.  Deuticke, 
Wien,  1895.     See  especially  p.  177  et  seq. 

115 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

may,  if  overtense,  result  in  ''  hysterical  convulsions." 
It  is  also  the  best  form  of  self-expression;  and  its  ad- 
vantage is  variability,  following  the  impulsion  of  the 
idle,  perhaps  hyperemic,  and  overnourished  centers  most 
ready  to  act.  It  involves  play  illusion  and  is  the  great 
agent  of  unity  and  totalization  of  body  and  soul,  while 
its  social  function  develops  solidarity  and  unison  of  ac- 
tion between  individuals.  The  dances,  feasts,  and  games 
of  primitive  people,  wherein  they  rehearse  hunting  and 
war  and  act  and  dance  out  their  legends,  bring  in- 
dividuals and  tribes  together.^  Work  is  menial,  cheer- 
less, grinding,  regular,  and  requires  more  precision  and 
accuracy  and,  because  attended  with  less  ease  and  pleas- 
ure and  economy  of  movement,  is  more  liable  to  produce 
erratic  habits.  Antagonistic  as  the  forms  often  are, 
it  may  be  that,  as  Carr  says,  we  may  sometimes  so 
suffuse  work  with  the  play  spirit,  and  vice  versa,  that 
the  present  distinction  between  work  and  play  will 
vanish,  the  transition  will  be  less  tragic  and  the  activi- 
ties of  youth  will  be  slowly  systematized  into  a  whole 
that  better  fits  his  nature  and  needs;  or,  if  not  this, 
we  may  at  least  find  the  true  proportion  and  system 
between  drudgery  and  recreation. 

The  worst  product  of  striving  to  do  things  with 
defective  psychic  impulsion  is  fatigue  in  its  common 
forms,  which  slows  down  the  pace,  multiplies  errors  and 
inaccuracies,  and  develops  slovenly  habits,  ennui,  flit- 
ting will  specters,  velleities  and  caprices,  and  neuras- 
thenic symptoms  generally.  It  brings  restlessness,  and 
a   tendency   to   many    little    heterogeneous,    smattering 

1  See  a  valuable  discussion  by  H.  A.  Carr,  The  Survival  Values  of 
Play,  Investigations  of  the  Department  of  Psychology  and  Education 
of  the  University  of  Colorado,  Arthur  AUin,  Ph.D.,  Editor,  November, 
1902,  vol.  1,  pp.  3-47 

116 


PLAY,  SPORTS,  AND   GAMES 

efforts  that  weaken  the  will  and  leave  the  mind  like 
a  piece  of  well-used  blotting  paper,  covered  with  traces 
and  nothing  legible.  All  beginnings  are  easy,  and  only 
as  we  leave  the  early  stages  of  proficiency  behind  and 
press  on  in  either  physical  or  mental  culture  and  en- 
counter difficulties,  do  individual  differences  and  the 
tendency  of  weak  wills  to  change  and  turn  to  some- 
thing else  increase.  Perhaps  the  greatest  disparity  be- 
tween men  is  the  power  to  make  a  long  concentrative, 
persevering  effort,  for  In  der  Beschrdnkung  zeigt  sich 
der  Meister}  Now  no  kind  or  line  of  culture  is  com- 
plete till  it  issues  in  motor  habits,  and  makes  a  well-knit 
soul  texture  that  admits  concentration  series  in  many 
directions  and  that  can  bring  all  its  resources  to  bear 
at  any  point.  The  brain  unorganized  by  training  has, 
to  recur  to  Richter's  well-worn  aphorism,  saltpeter,  sul- 
fur, and  charcoal,  or  all  the  ingredients  of  gunpowder, 
but  never  makes  a  grain  of  it  because  they  never  get 
together.  Thus  willed  action  is  the  language  of  com- 
plete men  and  the  goal  of  education.  When  things  are 
mechanized  by  right  habituation,  there  is  still  further 
gain;  for  not  only  is  the  mind  freed  for  further  and 
higher  work,  but  this  deepest  stratum  of  motor  associ- 
ation is  a  plexus  that  determines  not  only  conduct  and 
character,  but  even  beliefs.  The  person  who  deliber- 
ates is  lost,  if  the  intellect  that  doubts  and  weighs 
alternatives  is  less  completely  organized  than  habits.  All 
will  culture  is  intensive  and  should  safeguard  us  against 
the  chance  influence  of  life  and  the  insidious  danger  of 
great  ideas  in  small  and  feeble  minds.  Now  fatigue, 
personal  and  perhaps  racial,  is  just  what  arrests  in  the 
incomplete  and  mere  memory  or- noetic  stage.    It  makes 


1  The  master  shows  himself  in  limitation. 

117 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

weak  bodies  that  command,  and  not  strong  ones  that 
obey.  It  divorces  knowing  and  doing,  Kennen  and 
Konnen,  a  separation  which  the  Greeks  could  not  con- 
ceive because  for  them  knowledge  ended  in  skill  or  was 
exemplified  in  precepts  and  proverbs  that  were  so  clear 
cut  that  the  pain  of  violating  them  was  poignant.  Ideas 
must  be  long  worked  over  till  life  speaks  as  with  the 
rifle  and  not  with  the  shotgun,  and  still  less  with  the 
water  hose.  The  purest  thought,  if  true,  is  only  action 
repressed  to  be  ripened  to  more  practical  form.  Not 
only  do  muscles  come  before  mind,  will  before  intel- 
ligence, and  sound  ideas  rest  on  a  motor  basis,  but  all 
really  useless  knowledge  tends  to  be  eliminated  as  error 
or  superstition.  The  roots  of  play  lie  close  to  those 
of  creative  imagination  and  idealism. 

The  opposite  extreme  is  the  factitious  and  superficial 
motivation  of  fear,  prizes,  examinations,  artificial  and 
immediate  rewards  and  penalties,  which  can  only  tattoo 
the  mind  and  body  with  conventional  patterns  pricked 
in,  but  which  lead  an  unreal  life  in  the  soul  because  they 
have  no  depth  of  soil  in  nature  or  heredity.  However 
precious  and  coherent  in  themselves,  all  subject-matters 
thus  organized  are  mere  lugs,  crimps,  and  frills.  All  such 
culture  is  spurious,  unreal,  and  parasitic.  It  may  make 
a  scholastic  or  sophistic  mind,  but  a  worm  is  at  the  root 
and,  with  a  dim  sense  of  the  vanity  of  all  knowledge 
that  does  not  become  a  rule  of  life,  some  form  of 
pessimism  is  sure  to  supervene  in  every  serious  soul. 
With  age  a  civilization  accumulates  such  impedimenta, 
traditional  flotsam  and  jetsam,  and  race  fatigue  proceeds 
with  equal  step  with  its  increasing  volume.  Immediate 
utilities  are  better,  but  yet  not  so  much  better  than 
acquisitions  that  have  no  other  than  a  school  or  exam- 
ination  value.      If,    as   Ruskin   says,   all   true   work   is 

118 


PLAY,  SPORTS,  AND   GAMES 

praise,  all  true  play  is  love  and  prayer.  Instil  into  a 
boy's  soul  learning  which  he  sees  and  feels  not  to  have 
the  highest  worth  and  which  can  not  become  a  part 
of  his  active  life  and  increase  it,  and  his  freshness, 
spontaneity,  and  the  fountains  of  play  slowly  run  dry 
in  him,  and  his  youth  fades  to  early  desiccation.  The 
instincts,  feelings,  intuitions,  the  work  of  which  is 
always  play,  are  superseded  by  method,  grind,  and 
education  by  instruction  which  is  only  an  effort 
to  repair  the  defects  of  heredity,  for  which,  at  its 
best,  it  is  a  vulgar,  pinchbeck  substitute.  The  best 
play  is  true  genius,  which  always  comes  thus  into 
the  Avorld,  and  has  this  way  of  doing  its  work,  and 
all  the  contents  of  the  memory  pouches  is  luggage  to 
be  carried  rather  than  the  vital  strength  that  carries 
burdens.  Gross  well  says  that  children  are  young  be- 
cause they  play,  and  not  vice  versa ;  and  he  might  have 
added,  men  grow  old  because  they  stop  playing,  and 
not  conversely,  for  play  is,  at  bottom,  growth,  and  at 
the  top  of  the  intellectual  scale  it  is  the  eternal  type 
of  research  from  sheer  love  of  truth.  Home,  school, 
church,  state,  civilization,  are  measured  in  one  supreme 
scale  of  values,  viz.,  whether  and  how,  for  they  aid  in 
bringing  youth  to  its  fullest  maturity.  Even  vice,  crime, 
and  decline  are  often  only  arrest  or  backsliding  or 
reversion.  National  and  racial  decline  beginning  in 
eliminating  one  by  one  the  last  and  highest  styles 
of  development  of  body  and  mind,  mental  stimulus  of 
excessive  dosage  lowers  general  nutrition.  A  psycholo- 
gist that  turns  his  back  on  mere  subtleties  and  goes  to 
work  in  a  life  of  service  has  here  a  great  opportunity, 
and  should  not  forget,  as  Horace  I\Iann  said,  "  that  for 
all  that  grows,  one  former  is  worth  one  hundred  re- 
formers. ' ' 

9  119 


CHAPTER   VII 

FAULTS,    LIES,    AND    CRIMES 

Classifications  of  children's  faults — Peculiar  children — Real  faults  as  dis- 
tinguished from  interference  with  the  teacher's  ease — Truancy,  its 
nature  and  effects — The  genesis  of  crime — The  lie,  its  classes  and  re- 
lations to  imagination  —  Predatory  activities  —  Gangs  —  Causes  of 
crime — The  effects  of  stories  of  crime — Temibility — Juvenile  crime 
and  its  treatment. 

SiEGERT  ^  groups  children  of  problematical  nature 
into  the  following  sixteen  classes :  the  sad,  the  extremely 
good  or  bad,  star-gazers,  scatter-brains,  apathetic,  mis- 
anthropic, doubters  and  investigators,  reverent,  critical, 
executive,  stupid  and  clownish,  naive,  funny,  anamnesic, 
disposed  to  learn,  and  hlasS;  patience,  foresight,  and 
self-control,  he  thinks,  are  chiefly  needed. 

A  unique  and  interesting  study  was  undertaken  by 
Kozle  ^  by  collecting  and  studying  thirty  German  writers 
on  pedagogical  subjects  since  Pestalozzi,  and  cataloguing 
all  the  words  they  use  describing  the  faults  of  children. 
In  all,  this  gave  914  faults,  far  more  in  number  than 
their  virtues.  These  were  classified  as  native  and  of  ex- 
ternal origin,  acute  and  chronic,  egoistic  and  altruistic, 
greed,  perverted  honor,  self-will,  falsity,  laziness,  frivol- 
ity, distraction,  precocity,  timidity,  envy  and  malevo- 
lence, ingratitude,  quarrelsomeness,  cruelty,  superstition ; 

1  Problematische  Kindesnaturen.     Eine  Studie  fiir  Schule  und  Haus. 
Voigtlander,  Leipzig,  1889. 

2  Die  padagogische  Pathologic  in  der  Erziehungskunde  des  19 
Jalxrhunderts.     Bertelsman,  Giitersloh,  1893,  p.  494. 

120 


FAULTS,  LIES,  AND   CRIMES 

and  the  latter  fifteen  were  settled  on  as  resultant  groups, 
and  the  authors  who  describe  them  best  are  quoted. 

Bohannon  ^  on  the  basis  of  questionnaire  returns 
classified  peculiar  children  as  heavy,  tall,  short,  small, 
strong,  weak,  deft,  agile,  clumsy,  beautiful,  ugly,  de- 
formed, birthmarked,  keen  and  precocious,  defective  in 
sense,  mind,  and  speech^^  nervous,  clean,  dainty,  dirty. 


Age 

11 

12 

13 

U 

15 

16 

17 

18 

74 
73 

72 

70 

69 

|67 
|60 

64 
63 
62 
61 
60 
59 
58 

r 

/ 

j 

/ 

~\ 

/ 

\ 

/^ 

\ 

/ 

/ 

\ 

1 

\ 

/ 

\ 

^ 

/ 

\y 

\ 

r 

\ 

/ 

' 

r 

\ 

1 

\ 

\J 

Number 
of  Cases 

362 

409 

4:31 

431 

427 

314 

290 

345 

orderly,  obedient,  disobedient,  disorderly,  teasing,  buoy- 
ant, buffoon,  cruel,  selfish,  generous,  sympathetic,  in- 
quisitive, lying,  ill-tempered,  silent,  dignified,  frank, 
loquacious,  courageous,  timid,  whining,  spoiled,  glutton- 
ous, and  only  child. 

Marro  -  tabulated  the  conduct  of  3,012  boys  in  gym- 
nasial  and  lyceal  classes  in  Italy  from  eleven  to  eighteen 
years  of  age  (see  table  given  above).  Conduct  was 
marked  as  good,  bad,  and  indifferent,  according  to  the 

1  Peculiar  and  Exceptional  Children.     Pedagogical  Seminary,  Octo- 
ber, 1896,  vol.  4,  pp.  3-60. 

2  La  Pubert<5.     Schleicher  Freres,  Paris,  1902,  p.  72. 

121 


YOUTH  :  ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

teacher's  estimate,  and  was  good  at  eighteen  in  74  per 
cent  of  the  cases;  at  eleven  in  70  per  cent;  at  seventeen 
in  69  per  cent;  and  at  fourteen  in  only  58  per  cent.  In 
positively  bad  conduct,  the  age  of  fifteen  led,  thirteen 
and  fourteen  were  but  little  better,  while  it  improved  at 
sixteen,  seventeen,  and  eighteen.  In  general,  conduct 
was  good  at  eleven;  declined  at  twelve  and  thirteen; 
sank  to  its  worst  at  fourteen;  and  then  improved  in 
yearly  increments  that  did  not  differ  much,  and  at  seven- 
teen was  nearly  as  good  as  at  eleven,  and  at  eighteen 
four  points  better. 

He  computed  also  the  following  percentage  table  of 
the  causes  of  punishments  in  certain  Italian  schools  for 
girls  and  boys  near  pubescent  ages: 

Boys  Girls 

Quarrels  and  blows 53 .  90  17.4 

Laziness,  negligence 1 .80  21 .3 

Untidiness 10.70  24.7 

Improper  language 41  14.6 

Indecent  acts  and  words 1 .00  .24 

Refusal  to  work 82  1.26 

Various  offenses  against  discipline 19. 00  19.9 

Truancy 9.60  .0 

Plots  to  run  away 1 .  70  .0 

Running  away 72  .0 

Mr.  Sears  ^  reports  in  percentages  statistics  of  the 
punishments  received  by  a  thousand  children  for  the 
following  offenses:  Disorder,  17^;  disobedience,  16; 
carelessness,  13^ ;  running  away,  12| ;  quarreling,  10 ; 
tardiness,  6f ;  rudeness,  6;  fighting,  5J;  lying,  4;  steal- 
ing, 1 ;  miscellaneous,  7^.  He  names  a  long  list  of  pun- 
ishable offenses,  such  as  malice,  swearing,  obscenity, 
bullying,   lying,   cheating,   untidiness,   insolence,   insult, 

>  Home  and  School  Punishments.  Pedagogical  Seminary,  March, 
1899,  vol.  6,  pp.  159-187. 

122 


FAULTS,  LIES,  AND  CRIMES 

conspiracy,  disobedience,  obstinacy,  rudeness,  noisiness, 
ridicule;  injury  to  books,  building,  or  other  property; 
and  analyzes  at  length  the  kinds  of  punishment,  modes 
of  making  it  fit  the  offense  and  the  nature  of  the  child, 
the  discipline  of  consequences,  lapse  of  time  between  the 
offense  and  its  punishment,  the  principle  of  slight  but 
sure  tasks  as  penalties,  etc. 

Triplett  ^  attempted  a  census  of  faults  and  defects 
named  by  the  teacher.  Here  inattention  by  far  led  all 
others.  Defects  of  sense  and  speech,  carelessness,  in- 
difference, lack  of  honor  and  of  self-restraint,  laziness, 
dreamy  listlessness,  nervousness,  mental  incapacity,  lack 
of  consideration  for  others,  vanity,  affectation,  dis- 
obedience, untruthfulness,  grumbling,  etc.,  follow.  In- 
attention to  a  degree  that  makes  some  children  at  the 
mercy  of  their  environment  and  all  its  changes,  and  their 
mental  life  one  perpetual  distraction,  is  a  fault  which 
teachers,  of  course,  naturally  observe.  Children's  views 
of  their  own  faults  and  those  of  other  children  lay  a  very 
different  emphasis.  Here  fighting,  bullying,  and  teasing 
lead  all  others;  then  come  stealing,  bad  manners,  lying, 
disobedience,  truancy,  cruelty  to  animals,  untidiness, 
selfishness,  etc.  Parents'  view  of  this  subject  Triplett 
found  still  different.  Here  wilfulness  and  obstinacy 
led  all  others  with  teasing,  quarreling,  dislike  of  applica- 
tion and  effort,  and  many  others  following.  The  vast 
number  of  faults  mentioned  contrasts  very  strikingly 
with  the  seven  deadly  sins. 

In  a  suggestive  statistical  study  on  the  relations  of 
the  conduct  of  children  to  the  weather,  Dexter  ^  found 

1  A  Study  of  the  Faults  of  Children.  Pedagogical  Seminary,  June, 
1903,  vol.  10,  p.  200  et  seq. 

2  The  Child  and  the  Weather,  by  Edwin  G.  Dexter.  Pedagogical 
Seminary,  April,  1898,  vol.  5,  pp.  512-522. 

123 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

that  excessive  humidity  was  most  productive  of  misde- 
meanors; that  when  the  temperature  was  between  90 
and  100  the  probability  of  bad  conduct  was  increased 
300  per  cent,  when  between  80  and  90  it  was  increased 
104  per  cent.  Abnormal  barometric  pressure,  whether 
great  or  small,  was  found  to  increase  misconduct  50  per 
cent ;  abnormal  movements  of  the  wind  increased  it  from 
20  to  66  per  cent ;  while  the  time  of  year  and  precipita- 
tion seemed  to  have  almost  no  effect.  While  the  effect 
of  weather  has  been  generally  recognized  by  superintend- 
ents and  teachers  and  directors  of  prisons  and  asylums, 
and  even  by  banks,  which  in  London  do  not  permit  clerks 
to  do  the  more  important  bookkeeping  during  very  foggy 
days,  the  statistical  estimates  of  its  effect  in  general 
need  larger  numbers  for  more  valuable  determina- 
tions. Temperature  is  known  to  have  a  very  distinct 
effect  upon  crime,  especially  suicide  and  truancy.  Work- 
men do  less  in  bad  w^eather,  blood  pressure  is  modi- 
fied, etc.^ 

In  his  study  of  truancy,  Kline  ^  starts  with  the  as- 
sumption that  the  maximum  metabolism  is  always  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously  sought,  and  that  migrations 
are  generally  away  from  the  extremes  of  hot  and  cold 
toward  an  optimum  temperature.  The  curve  of  truan- 
cies and  runaways  increases  in  a  marked  ratio  at  pu- 
berty, which  probably  represents  the  age  of  natural 
majority  among  primitive  people.  Dislike  of  school,  the 
passion  for  out-of-door  life,  and  more  universal  interests 
in  man  and  nature  now  arise,  so  that  runaways  may 
be  interpreted  as  an  instinctive  rebellion  against  limita- 

J  Psychic  Effects  of  the  Weather,  by  J.  S.  I.emon.  American 
Journal  of  Psychology,  January,  1894,  vol.  6,  pp.  277-279. 

2  Truancy  as  Related  to  the  Migrating  Instinct,  by  L.  W.  Kline. 
Pedagogical  Seminary,  January,  1898,  vol.  5,  pp.  381-420. 

124 


FAULTS,  LIES,  AND  CRIMES 

tions  of  freedom  and  unnatural  methods  of  education  as 
well  as  against  poor  homes.  Hunger  is  one  of  its  most 
potent,  although  often  unconscious  causes.  The  habit- 
ual environment  now  begins  to  seem  dull  and  there  is  a 
great  increase  in  impatience  at  restraint.  Sometimes 
there  is  a  mania  for  simply  going  away  and  enjoying  the 
liberty  of  nomadic  life.  Just  as  good  people  in  foreign 
parts  sometimes  allow  themselves  unwonted  liberties,  so 
vagrancy  increases  crime.  The  passion  to  get  to  and  play 
at  or  in  the  water  is  often  strangely  dominant.  It  seems 
so  fine  out  of  doors,  especially  in  the  spring,  and  the 
woods  and  fields  make  it  so  hard  to  voluntarily  incarcer- 
ate oneself  in  the  schoolroom,  that  pubescent  boys  and 
even  girls  often  feel  like  animals  in  captivity.  They 
long  intensely  for  the  utter  abandon  of  a  wilder  life,  and 
very  characteristic  is  the  frequent  discarding  of  foot  and 
head  dress  and  even  garments  in  the  blind  instinct  to 
realize  again  the  conditions  of  primitive  man.  The  man- 
ifestations of  this  impulse,  if  read  aright,  are  grave  ar- 
raignments of  the  lack  of  adaptability  of  the  child's 
environment  to  his  disposition  and  nature,  and  with 
home  restraints  once  broken,  the  liabilities  to  every  crime, 
especially  theft,  are  enormously  increased.  The  truant, 
although  according  to  Kline's  measurements  slightly 
smaller  than  the  average  child,  is  more  energetic  and  is 
generally  capable  of  the  greatest  activity  and  useful- 
ness in  more  out-of-door  vocations.  Truancy  is  aug- 
mented, too,  just  in  proportion  as  legitimate  and  interest- 
ing physical  exercise  is  denied. 

The  vagrant,  itinerant,  vagabond,  gadabout,  hobo, 
and  tramp,  that  Riis  has  made  so  interesting,  is  an 
arrested,  degenerate,  or  perverted  being  who  abhors 
work ;  feels  that  the  world  owes  him  a  living ;  and  gen- 
erally has  his  first  real  nomad  experience  in  the  teens 

125 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

or  earlier.  It  is  a  chronic  illusion  of  youth  that  gives 
^'  elsewhere  "  a  special  charm.  In  the  immediate 
present  things  are  mean,  dulled  by  wont,  and  perhaps 
even  nauseating  because  of  familiarity.  There  must  be 
a  change  of  scene  to  see  the  world;  man  is  not  sessile 
but  locomotor;  and  the  moment  his  life  becomes  mi- 
gratory all  the  restraints  and  responsibilities  of  settled 
life  vanish.  It  is  possible  to  steal  and  pass  on  undis- 
covered and  unsuspected,  and  to  steal  again.  The 
vagabond  escapes  the  control  of  public  sentiment,  which 
normally  is  an  external  conscience,  and  having  none  of 
his  own  within  him  thus  lapses  to  a  feral  state.  The 
constraint  of  city,  home,  and  school  is  especially  irk- 
some, and  if  to  this  repulsion  is  added  the  attraction 
of  a  love  of  nature  and  of  perpetual  change,  we  have 
the  diathesis  of  the  roadsman  already  developed.  Ado- 
lescence is  the  normal  time  of  emancipation  from  the 
parental  roof,  when  youth  seeks  to  set  up  a  home  of 
its  own,  but  the  apprentice  to  life  must  wander  far  and 
long  enough  to  find  the  best  habitat  in  which  to  set  up 
for  himself.  This  is  the  spring  season  of  emigration; 
and  it  should  be  an  indispensable  part  of  every  life 
curriculum,  just  before  settlement,  to  travel  far  and 
wide,  if  resources  and  inclination  permit.  But  this 
stage  should  end  in  wisely  chosen  settlement  where  the 
young  life  can  be  independently  developed,  and  that 
with  more  complacency  and  satisfaction  because  the 
place  has  been  wisely  chosen  on  the  basis  of  a  wide 
comparison.  The  chronic  vagrant  has  simply  failed  to 
develop  the  reductives  of  this  normal  stage. 

Crime  is  cryptogamous  and  flourishes  in  concealment, 
so  that  not  only  does  falsehood  facilitate  it,  but  certain 
types  of  lies  often  cause  and  are  caused  by  it.  The  begin- 
ning of  wisdom  in  treatment  is  to  discriminate  between 

12G 


FAULTS,  LIES,  AND  CRIMES 

good  and  bad  lies.  My  own  study  ^  of  the  lies  of  300 
normal  children,  by  a  method  carefully  devised  in  order 
to  avoid  all  indelicacy  to  the  childish  consciousness, 
suggested  the  following  distinct  species  of  lies.  It  is 
often  a  well-marked  epoch  w^hen  the  young  child  first 
learns  that  it  can  imagine  and  state  things  that  have  no 
objective  counterpart  in  its  life,  and  there  is  often  a 
weird  intoxication  when  some  absurd  and  monstrous 
statement  is  made,  while  the  first  sensation  of  a  delib- 
erate break  with  truth  causes  a  real  excitement  which 
is  often  the  birth  pang  of  the  imagination.  More  com- 
monly this  is  seen  in  childish  play,  which  owes  a  part 
of  its  charm  to  self-deception.  Children  make  believe 
they  are  animals,  doctors,  ogres,  play  school,  that  they 
are  dead,  mimic  all  they  see  and  hear.  Idealizing  tem- 
peraments sometimes  prompt  children  of  three  or  four 
suddenly  to  assert  that  they  saw  a  pig  with  five  ears, 
apples  on  a  cherry-tree,  and  other  ]\Iunchausen  won- 
ders, wiiich  really  means  merely  that  they  have  had  a 
new  mental  combination  independently  of  experience. 
Sometimes  their  fancy  is  almost  visualization  and  de- 
velops into  a  kind  of  mythopeic  faculty  which  spins 
clever  yarns  and  suggests  in  a  sense,  quite  as  pregnant 
as  Froschmer  asserts  of  all  mental  activity  and  of  the 
universe  itself,  that  all  their  life  is  imagination.  Its 
control  and  not  its  elimination  in  a  Gradgrind  age  of 
crass  facts  is  what  should  be  sought  in  the  interests  of 
the  highest  truthfulness  and  of  the  evolution  of  thought 
as  something  above  reality,  which  prepares  the  way  for 
imaginative  literature.  The  life  of  Hartley  Coleridge,^ 
by  his  brother,  is  one  of  many  illustrations.     He  fancied 

1  Children's  Lies.     American  Journal  of  Psychology,  January,   1890, 
vol.  3,  pp.  59-70. 

2  Poems.     With  memoir  by  his  brother,  2  vols.,  London,  1851. 

127 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

a  cataract  of  what  he  named  "  jug-force  "  would  burst 
out  in  a  certain  field  and  flow  between  populous  banks, 
where  an  ideal  government,  long  wars,  and  even  a  re- 
form in  spelling,  would  prevail,  illustrated  in  a  journal 
devoted  to  the  affairs  of  this  realm — all  these  developed 
in  his  imagination,  where  they  existed  with  great  reality 
for  years.  The  vividness  of  this  fancy  resembles  the 
pseudo-hallucinations  of  Kandinsky.  Two  sisters  used 
to  say,  ' '  Let  us  play  w^e  are  sisters, "  as  if  this  made  the 
relation  more  real.  Cagliostro  found  adolescent  boys 
particularly  apt  for  training  for  his  exhibition  of 
phrenological  impostures,  illustrating  his  thirty-five 
faculties.  ''  He  lied  when  he  confessed  he  had  lied,"  said 
a  young  Sancho  Panza,  who  had  believed  the  wild  tales 
of  another  boy  who  later  admitted  their  falsity.  Sir 
James  Mackintosh,  near  puberty,  after  reading  Roman 
history,  used  to  fancy  himself  the  Emperor  of  Con- 
stantinople, and  carried  on  the  administration  of  the 
realm  for  hours  at  a  time.  His  fancies  never  quite  be- 
came convictions,  but  adolescence  is  the  golden  age  of 
this  kind  of  dreamery  and  reverie  which  supplements 
reality  and  totalizes  our  faculties,  and  often  gives  a 
special  charm  to  dramatic  activities  and  in  morbid  cases 
to  simulation  and  dissimulation.  It  is  a  state  from 
which  some  of  the  bad,  but  far  more  of  the  good  quali- 
ties of  life  and  mind  arise.  These  are  the  noble  lies 
of  poetry,  art,  and  idealism,  but  their  pedagogic  regi- 
men must  be  wise. 

Again  with  children  as  with  savages,  truth  depends 
largely  upon  personal  likes  and  dislikes.  Truth  is  for 
friends,  and  lies  are  felt  to  be  quite  right  for  enemies. 
The  young  often  see  no  wrong  in  lies  their  friends  wish 
told,  but  may  collapse  and  confess  when  asked  if  they 
would  have  told  their  mother  thus.     Boys  best  keep  up 

128 


FAULTS,  LIES,  AND   CRIMES 

complotted  lies  and  are  surer  to  own  up  if  caught  than 
girls.  It  is  harder  to  cheat  in  school  with  a  teacher 
w^ho  is  liked.  Friendships  are  cemented  by  confidences 
and  secrets,  and  when  they  wane,  promises  not  to  tell 
weaken  in  their  validity.  Lies  to  the  priest,  and  above 
all  to  God,  are  the  worst.  All  this  makes  special  at- 
tention to  friendships,  leaders,  and  favorites  important, 
and  suggests  the  high  value  of  science  for  general 
veracity. 

The  worst  lies,  perhaps,  are  those  of  selfishness. 
They  ease  children  over  many  hard  places  in  life,  and 
are  convenient  covers  for  weakness  and  vice.  These 
lies  are,  on  the  whole,  judging  from  our  census,  most 
prevalent.  They  are  also  most  corrupting  and  hard  to 
correct.  All  bad  habits  particularly  predispose  to  the 
lie  of  concealment;  for  those  who  do  wrong  are  almost 
certain  to  have  recourse  to  falsehood,  and  the  sense  of 
meanness  thus  slowly  bred,  which  may  be  met  by  ap- 
peals to  honor,  for  so  much  of  which  school  life  is 
responsible,  is  often  mitigated  by  the  fact  that  false- 
hoods are  frequently  resorted  to  in  moments  of  danger 
and  excitement,  are  easily  forgotten  when  it  is  over,  and 
rarely  rankle.  These,  even  more  than  the  pseudomaniac 
cases  mentioned  later,  grow  rankly  in  those  with  crim- 
inal predispositions. 

The  lie  heroic  is  often  justified  as  a  means  of  noble 
ends.  Youth  has  an  instinct  which  is  wholesome  for 
viewing  moral  situations  as  wholes.  Callow  casualists 
are  fond  of  declaring  that  it  would  be  a  duty  to  state 
that  their  mother  was  out  when  she  was  in,  if  it  would 
save  her  life,  although  they  perhaps  would  not  lie  to 
save  their  own.  A  doctor,  many  suggested,  might  tell 
an  overanxious  patient  or  friend  that  there  was  hope, 
saving  his  conscience  perhaps  by  reflecting  that  there 

129 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

was  hope,  although  they  had  it  while  he  had  none.  The 
end  at  first  in  such  cases  may  be  very  noble  and  the 
fib  or  quibble  very  petty,  but  worse  lies  for  meaner 
objects  may  follow.  Youth  often  describes  such  situa- 
tions with  exhilaration  as  if  there  were  a  feeling  of 
easement  from  the  monotonous  and  tedious  obligation  of 
rigorous  literal  veracity,  and  here  mentors  are  liable 
to  become  nervous  and  err.  The  youth  who  really  gets 
interested  in  the  conflict  of  duties  may  reverently  be 
referred  to  the  inner  lie  of  his  own  conscience,  the  need 
of  keeping  which  as  a  private  tribunal  is  now  apparent. 

Many  adolescents  become  craven  literalists  and  dis- 
tinctly morbid  and  pseudophobiac,  regarding  every  de- 
viation from  scrupulously  literal  truth  as  alike  heinous; 
and  many  systematized  palliatives  and  casuistic  word- 
splittings,  methods  of  whispering  or  silently  interpola- 
ting the  words  "  not,"  "  perhaps,"  or  ''  I  think," 
sometimes  said  over  hundreds  of  times  to  neutralize  the 
guilt  of  intended  or  unintended  falsehoods,  appear  in 
our  records  as  a  sad  product  of  bad  methods. 

Next  to  the  selfish  lie  for  protection — of  special 
psychological  interest  for  adolescent  crime — is  what  we 
may  call  pseudomania,  seen  especially  in  pathological 
girls  in  their  teens,  who  are  honeycombed  with  selfish- 
ness and  affectation  and  have  a  passion  for  always  act- 
ing a  part,  attracting  attention,  etc.  The  recent  lit- 
erature of  telepathy  and  hypnotism  furnishes  many 
striking  examples  of  this  diathesis  of  impostors  of  both 
sexes.  It  is  a  strange  psychological  paradox  that  some 
can  so  deliberately  prefer  to  call  black  white  and  find 
distinct  inebriation  in  flying  diametrically  in  the  face 
of  truth  and  fact.  The  great  impostors,  whose  entire 
lives  have  been  a  fabric  of  lies,  are  cases  in  point.  They 
find  a  distinct  pleasure  not  only  in  the  sense  of  power 

130 


FAULTS,  LIES,  AND  CRIMES 

:;^hich  their  ability  to  make  trouble  gives,  but  in  the 
sense  of  making  truth  a  lie  and  of  decreeing  things  into 
and  out  of  existence. 

Sheldon's  interesting  statistics  show  that  among  the 
institutional  activities  of  American  children,^  predatory 
organizations  culminate  from  eleven  to  fifteen,  and  are 
chiefly  among  boj^s.  These  include  bands  of  robbers, 
clubs  for  hunting  and  fishing,  play  armies,  organized 
fighting  bands  between  separate  districts,  associations  for 
building  forts,  etc.  This  form  of  association  is  the 
typical  one  for  boys  of  twelve.  After  this  age  their 
interests  are  gradually  transferred  to  less  loosely  or- 
ganized athletic  clubs.  Sheldon's  statistics  are  as  fol- 
lows : 


Age 8 

No.  of  pred- 
atory so- 
cieties. 


9 

10 

11 

12     13     14     15 

16 

17 

Total 

5 
2 

3 
17 

0 
31 

7       113 

18     22   (11)     7 

1 
1 

0 
0 

25  =  Girls 
lll=Boys 

Innocent  though  these  predatory  habits  may  be  in 
small  boys,  if  they  are  not  naturally  and  normally  re- 
duced at  the  beginning  of  the  teens  and  their  energy 
worked  off  into  athletic  societies,  they  become  danger- 
ous. '*  The  robber  knight,  the  pirate  chief,  and  the 
savage  marauder  become  the  real  models."  The  steal- 
ing clubs  gather  edibles  and  even  useless  things,  the  loss 
of  which  causes  mischief,  into  some  den,  cellar,  or  camp 
in  the  woods,  where  the  plunder  of  their  raids  is  col- 
lected. An  organized  gang  of  boy  pilferers  for  the 
purpose  of  entering  stores  had  a  cache,  where  the  stolen 
goods  were  brought  together.  Some  of  these  bands  have 
specialized  on  electric  bells  and  connections,  or  golf 
sticks  and  balls.    Jacob  Riis  says  that  on  the  East  Side 

1  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  July,  1898,  vol.  9,  pp.  425-448. 

131 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

of  New  York/ every  corner  has  its  gang  with  a  pro> 
gram  of  defiance  of  law  and  order,  where  the  young 
tough  who  is  a  coward  alone  becomes  dangerous  when 
he  hunts  with  the  pack.  He  is  ambitious  to  get 
"  pinched  "  or  arrested  and  to  pose  as  a  hero.  His 
vanity  may  obliterate  common  fear  and  custom  as  his 
mind  becomes  inflamed  with  flash  literature  and  ' '  penny 
dreadfuls."  Sometimes  whole  neighborhoods  are  ter- 
rorized so  that  no  one  dares  to  testify  against  the  atroci- 
ties they  commit.  Riis  even  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that 
^'  a  bare  enumeration  of  the  names  of  the  best-known 
gangs  would  occupy  the  pages  of  this  book. ' '  ^  The 
names  are  sufficiently  suggestive — hell's  kitchen  gang, 
stable  gang,  dead  men,  floaters,  rock,  pay,  hock  gang, 
the  soup-house  gang,  plug  uglies,  back-alley  men,  dead 
beats,  cop  beaters  and  roasters,  hell  benders,  chain  gang, 
sheeny  skinners,  street  cleaners,  tough  kids,  sluggers, 
wild  Indians,  cave  and  cellar  men,  moonlight  howlers, 
junk  club,  crook  gang,  being  some  I  have  heard  of.  Some 
of  the  members  of  these  gangs  never  knew  a  home,  were 
found  perhaps  as  babies  wrapped  in  newspapers,  sur- 
vivors of  the  seventy-two  dead  infants  Riis  saj^s  were 
picked  up  on  the  streets  in  New  York  in  1889,  or  of 
baby  farming.  They  grow  up  street  arabs,  slum  waifs, 
the  driftwood  of  society,  its  flotsam  and  jetsam,  or 
plankton,  fighting  for  a  warm  corner  in  their  resorts  or 
living  in  crowded  tenement-houses  that  rent  for  more 
than  a  house  on  Fifth  Avenue.  Arrant  cowards  singly, 
they  dare  and  do  anything  together.  A  gang  stole  a 
team  in  East  New  York  and  drove  down  the  avenue, 
stopping  to  throw  in  supplies,  one  member  sitting  in 
the  back  of  the  wagon  and  shooting  at  all  who  inter- 

1  How  the  other  Half  Lives.     Scribner's  Sons,  New    York,   1890, 
p.  229. 

132 


FAULTS,  LIES,  AND  CRLMES 

fered.  One  gang  specialized  on  stealing  baby  carriages, 
depositing  their  inmates  on  the  sidewalk.  Another  blew 
up  a  grocery  store  because  its  owner  refused  a  gift  they 
demanded.  Another  tried  to  saw  off  the  head  of  a  Jewish 
pedler.  One  member  killed  another  for  calling  him  ' '  no 
gent."  Six  murderous  assaults  were  made  at  one  time 
by  these  gangs  within  a  single  week.  One  who  is  caught 
and  does  his  ' '  bit  "  or  '  *  stretch  '  Ms  a  hero,  and  when 
a  leader  is  hanged,  as  has  sometimes  happened,  he  is 
almost  envied  for  his  notoriety.  A  frequent  ideal  is  to 
pound  a  policeman  with  his  own  club.  The  gang  fed- 
erates all  nationalities.  Property  is  depreciated  and 
may  be  ruined  if  it  is  frequented  by  these  gangs  or 
becomes  their  lair  or  "  hang-out."  A  citizen  residing 
on  the  Hudson  procured  a  howitzer  and  pointed  it  at 
a  boat  gang,  forbidding  them  to  land  on  his  river  front- 
age. They  have  their  calls,  whistles,  signs,  rally  sud- 
denly from  no  one  knows  where,  and  vanish  in  the 
alleys,  basements,  roofs,  and  corridors  they  know  so 
well.  Their  inordinate  vanity  is  well  called  the  slum 
counterpart  of  self-esteem,  and  Riis  calls  the  gang  a 
club  run  wild.  They  have  their  own  ideality  and  a 
gaudy  pinchbeck  honor.  A  young  tough,  when  ar- 
rested, wrenched  away  the  policeman's  club,  dashed  into 
the  street,  rescued  a  baby  from  a  runaway,  and  came 
back  and  gave  himself  up.  They  batten  on  the  yellowest 
literature.  Those  of  foreign  descent,  who  come  to  speak 
our  language  better  than  their  parents,  early  learn  to 
despise  them.  Gangs  emulate  each  other  in  hardihood, 
and  this  is  one  cause  of  epidemics  in  crime.  They  pas- 
sionately love  boundless  independence;  are  sometimes 
very  susceptible  to  good  influence  if  applied  with  great 
wisdom  and  discretion,  but  easily  fall  away.  What  is 
the  true  moral  antitoxin  for  this  class,  or  at  least  what 

133 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

is  the  safety-valve  and  how  and  when  to  pull  it,  we 
are  now  just  beginning  to  learn,  but  it  is  a  new  spe- 
cialty in  the  great  work  of  salvage  from  the  wreckage 
of  city  life.  In  London,  where  these  groups  are  better 
organized  and  yet  more  numerous,  war  is  often  waged 
between  them,  weapons  are  used  and  murder  is  not  so 
very  infrequent.  Normally  this  instinct  passes  harm- 
lessly over  into  associations  for  physical  training,  which 
furnishes  a  safe  outlet  for  these  instincts,  until  the 
reduetives  of  maturer  years  have  perfected  their  work. 
I  The  causation  of  crime,  which  the  cure  seeks  to  re- 
move, is  a  problem  comparable  with  the  origin  of  sin 
and  evil.  First,  of  course,  comes  heredity,  bad  ante- 
natal conditions,  bad  homes,  unhealthful  infancy  and 
childhood,  overcrowded  slums  with  their  promiscuity 
and  squalor,  which  are  always  near  the  border  of  law- 
lessness, and  perhaps  are  the  chief  cause  of  crime.  A 
large  per  cent  of  juvenile  offenders,  variously  estimated, 
but  probably  one-tenth  of  all,  are  vagrants  or  without 
homes,  and  divorce  of  parents  and  illegitimacy  seem 
to  be  nearly  equal  as  causative  agencies.  If  whatever  is 
physiologically  wrong  is  morally  wrong,  and  whatever  is 
physiologically  right  is  morally  right,  we  have  an  im- 
portant ethical  suggestion  from  somatic  conditions. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  conscious  intelligence  during  a 
certain  early  stage  of  its  development  tends  to  de- 
teriorate the  strength  and  infallibility  of  instinctive 
processes,  so  that  education  is  always  beset  with  the 
danger  of  interfering  with  ancestral  and  congenital 
tendencies.  Its  prime  object  ought  to  be  moral ization, 
but  it  can  not  be  denied  that  in  conquering  ignorance  we 
do  not  thereby  conquer  poverty  or  vice.  After  the  free 
schools  in  London  were  opened  there  was  an  increase 
of   juvenile   offenders.      New  kinds   of  crime,   such   as 

134 


FAULTS,  LIES,  AND  CRIMES 

forgery,  grand  larceny,  intricate  swindling  schemes, 
were  doubled,  while  sneak  thieves,  drunkards,  and  pick- 
pockets decreased,  and  the  proportion  of  educated  crim- 
inals was  greatly  augmented.^  To  collect  masses  of 
children  and  cram  them  with  the  same  unassimilated 
facts  is  not  education  in  this  sense,  and  we  ought  to 
confess  that  youthful  crime  is  an  expression  of  educa- 
tional failure.  Illiterate  criminals  are  more  likely  to 
be  detected,  and  also  to  be  condemned,  than  are  edu- 
cated criminals.  Every  anthropologist  knows  that  the 
deepest  poverty  and  ignorance  among  primitive  people 
are  in  nowise  incompatible  with  honesty,  integrity,  and 
virtue.  Indeed  there  is  much  reason  to  suspect  that 
the  extremes  of  wealth  and  poverty  are  more  produc- 
tive of  crime  than  ignorance,  or  even  intemperance. 
Educators  have  no  doubt  vastly  overestimated  the'  moral 
efficiency  of  the  three  R's  and  forgotten  that  character 
in  infancy  is  all  instinct;  that  in  childhood  it  is  slowly 
made  over  into  habits ;  while  at  adolescence  more  than  at 
any  other  period  of  life,  it  can  be  cultivated  through 
ideals.  The  dawn  of  puberty,  although  perhaps  marked 
by  a  certain  moral  hebetude,  is  soon  followed  by  a 
stormy  period  of  great  agitation,  when  the  very  worst 
and  best  impulses  in  the  human  soul  struggle  against 
each  other  for  its  possession,  and  when  there  is  peculiar 
proneness  to  be  either  very  good  or  very  bad.  As  the 
agitation  slowly  subsides,  it  is  found  that  there  has  been 
a  renaissance  of  either  the  best  or  the  worst  elements 
of  the  soul,  if  not  indeed  of  both. 

Although  pedagogues  make  vast  claims  for  the 
moralizing  effect  of  schooling,  I  can  not  find  a  single 
criminologist  who  is  satisfied  with  the  modern  school, 

1  The  Curse  in  Education,  by  Rebecca  Harding  Davis.     North  Amer- 
ican Review,  May,  1899,  vol.  168,  pp.  609-614. 

10  135 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

while  most  bring  the  severest  indictments  against  it  for 
the  blind  and  ignorant  assumption  that  the  three  R^s 
or  any  merely  intellectual  training  can  moralize.  [By 
nature,  children  are  more  or  less  morally  blind,  and 
statistics  show  that  between  thirteen  and  sixteen  incor- 
rigibility is  between  two  and  three  times  as  great  as  at 
any  other  age.  It  is  almost  impossible  for  adults  to 
realize  the  irresponsibility  and  even  moral  neurasthenia 
incidental  to  this  stage  of  development.!  If  we  reflect 
what  a  girl  w^ould  be  if  dressed  like  sT&yy  and  leading 
his  life  and  exposed  to  the  same  moral  contagion,  or 
what  a  boy  would  be  if  corseted  and  compelled  to  live 
like  a  girl,  perhaps  we  can  realize  that  whatever  role 
heredity  plays,  the  youth  who  go  wrong  are,  in  the  vast 
majority  of  cases,  victims  of  circumstances  or  of  im- 
maturity, and  deserving  of  both  pity  and  hope.  \  It  was 
this  sentiment  that  impelled  Zarnadelli  to  reconstruct 
the  criminal  law  of  Italy,  in  this  respect,  and  it  was 
this  sympathy  that  made  Rollet  a  self-constituted  ad- 
vocate, pleading  each  morning  for  the  twenty  or  thirty 
boys  and  eight  or  ten  girls  arrested  every  day  in  Paris. 
Those  smitten  with  the  institution  craze  or  with 
any  extreme  correctionalist  views  will  never  solve  the 
problem  of  criminal  youths.  First  of  all,  they  must 
be  carefully  and  objectively  studied,  lived  with,  and 
understood  as  in  this  country  Gulick,  Johnson,  Forbush, 
and  Yoder  are  doing  in  different  ways,  but  each  with 
success.  Criminaloid  youth  is  more  sharply  individ- 
ualized than  the  common  good  child,  who  is  less  differ- 
entiated. Virtue  is  more  uniform  and  monotonous  than 
sin.  There  is  one  right  but  there  are  many  wrong  ways, 
hence  they  need  to  be  individually  studied  by  every  pai- 
dological  method,  physical  and  psychic.  Keepers,  attend- 
ants, and  even  sponsors  who  have  to  do  with  these  chil- 

136 


FAULTS,  LIES,  AND   CRIMES 

clren  should  be  educators  with  souls  full  of  fatherhood 
and  motherhood,  and  they  should  understand  that  the 
darkest  criminal  propensities  are  frequently  offset  by 
the  very  best  qualities ;  that  juvenile  murderers  are  often 
very  tender-hearted  to  parents,  sisters,  children,  or 
pets ;  ^  they  should  understand  that  in  the  criminal  con- 
stitution there  are  precisely  the  same  ingredients,  al- 
though perhaps  differently  compounded,  accentuated, 
mutually  controlled,  etc.,  by  the  environment,  as  in 
themselves,  so  that  to  know  all  would,  in  the  great 
majority  of  cases,  be  to  pardon  all;  that  the  home 
sentiments  need  emphasis;  that  a  little  less  stress  of 
misery  to  overcome  the  effects  of  economic  malaise  and, 
above  all,  a  friend,  mentor,  adviser  are  needed. 

I  incline  to  think  that  many  children  would  be  bet- 
ter and  not  w^orse  for  reading,  provided  it  can  be  done 
in  tender  years,  stories  like  those  of  Captain  Kidd,  Jack 
Sheppard,  Dick  Turpin,  and  other  gory  tales,  and  per- 
haps later  tales  like  Eugene  Aram,  and  the  ophidian 
medicated  novel,  Elsie  Venner,  etc.,  on  the  principle  of 
the  Aristotelian  catharsis  to  arouse  betimes  the  higher 
faculties  which  develop  later,  and  whose  function  it  is 
to  deplete  the  bad  centers  and  suppress  or  inhibit  their 
activity.  Again,  I  believe  that  judicious  and  incisive 
scolding  is  a  moral  tonic,  which  is  often  greatly  needed, 
and  if  rightly  administered  would  be  extremely  effective, 
because  it  shows  the  instinctive  reaction  of  the  sane 
conscience  against  evil  deeds  and  tendencies.  Special 
pedagogic  attention  should  be  given  to  the  sentiment  of 
justice,  which  is  almost  the  beginning  of  personal  morals 
in  boys ;  and  plays  should  be  chosen  and  encouraged  that 
hold  the  beam  even,   regardless  of  personal  wish  and 

1  Holtzendorff :  Psychologic  des  Hordes.     C.  Pfeiffer,  Berlin,  1875. 

137 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

interest.  Further  yet  benevolence  and  its  underlying 
impulse  to  do  more  than  justice  to  our  associates;  to 
do  good  in  the  world ;  to  give  pleasure  to  those  about, 
and  not  pain,  can  be  directly  cultivated.  Truth-telling 
presents  a  far  harder  problem,  as  we  have  seen.  It 
is  no  pedagogical  triumph  to  clip  the  wings  of  fancy, 
but  effort  should  be  directed  almost  solely  against  the 
cowardly  lies,  which  cover  evil ;  and  the  heroism  of 
telling  the  truth  and  taking  the  consequences  is  another 
of  the  elements  of  the  moral  sense,  so  complex,  so  late  in 
development,  and  so  often  permanently  crippled.  The 
money  sense,  by  all  the  many  means  now  used  for  its 
development  in  school,  is  the  surest  safeguard  against  the 
most  common  juvenile  crime  of  theft,  and  much  can  be 
taught  by  precept,  example,  and  moral  regimen  of  the 
sacredness  of  property  rights.  The  regularity  of  school 
w^ork  and  its  industry  is  a  valuable  moralizing  agent,  but 
entirely  inadequate  and  insufficient  by  itself.  Educators 
must  face  the  fact  that  the  ultimate  verdict  concerning 
the  utility  of  the  school  will  be  determined,  as  Talleck 
well  says,  by  its  moral  efficiency  in  saving  children  from 
personal  vice  and  crime. 

Wherever  any  source  of  pollution  of  school  com- 
munities occurs,  it  must  be  at  once  and  effectively  de- 
tected, and  some  artificial  elements  must  be  introduced 
into  the  environment.  In  other  words,  there  must  be 
a  system  of  moral  orthopedics.  Garofalo's^  new  term 
and  principle  of  "  temibility  "  is  perhaps  of  great 
service.  He  would  thus  designate  the  quantum  of  evil 
feared  that  is  sufficient  to  restrain  criminal  impulsion. 
We  can  not  measure  guilt  or  culpability,  which  may  be 
of  all  degrees  from  nothing  to  infinity  perhaps,  but  we 

1  La  Criminologie.     Paris,  Alcan,  1890,  p.  332. 
138 


FAULTS,  LIES,  AND  CRIMES 

can  to  some  extent  scale  the  effectiveness  of  restraint, 
if  criminal  impulse  is  not  absolutely  irresistible.  Pain 
then  must  be  so  organized  as  to  folloAV  and  measure  the 
offense  by  as  nearly  a  natural  method  as  possible,  while 
on  the  other  hand  the  rewards  for  good  conduct  must 
also  be  more  or  less  accentuated.  Thus  the  problem  of 
criminology  for  youth  can  not. he. -based  on  the  principles 
now  recognized  for  adults.  They  can  not  be  protective 
of  society  only,  but  must  have  marked  reformatory  ele- 
ments. Solitude  ^  which  tends  to  make  w^eak,  agitated, 
and  fearful,  at  this  very  gregarious  age  should  be  en- 
forced with  very  great  discretion.  There  must  be  no 
personal  and  unmotivated  clemency  or  pardon  in  such 
a  scheme,  for,  according  to  the  old  saw,  "  Mercy  but 
murders,  pardoning  those  who  kill  ' ' ;  nor  on  the  other 
hand  should  there  be  the  excessive  disregard  of  per- 
sonal adjustments,  and  the  uniformitarian,  Avho  per- 
haps celebrated  his  highest  triumph  in  the  old  sentence, 
''  Kill  all  offenders  and  suspects,  for  God  will  know  his 
own,"  should  have  no  part  nor  lot  here.  The  philoso- 
pher Hartmann  has  a  suggestive  article  advocating  that 
penal  colonies  made  up  of  transported  criminals  should 
be  experimented  upon  by  statesmen  in  order  to  put  vari- 
ous theories  of  self-government  to  a  practical  test.  How- 
ever this  may  be,  the  penologist  of  youth  must  face 
some  such  problem  in  the  organization  of  the  house  of 
detention,  boys'  club,  farm,  reformatory,  etc.  We  must 
pass  beyond  the  clumsy  apparatus  of  a  term  sentence, 
or  the  devices  of  a  jury,  clumsier  yet,  for  this  purpose ; 
we  must  admit  the  principle  of  regret,  fear,  penance, 
material    restoration   of    damage,    and   understand    the 

^  See  its  psychology  and  dangers  well  pointed  out  by  M.  H.  Small: 
Psychical  Relations  of  Society  and  Solitude.  Pedagogical  Seminary, 
April,  1900,  vol.  7,  pp.  13-69. 

139 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

sense  in  which,  for  both  society  and  for  the  individual, 
it  makes  no  practical  difference  whether  experts  think 
there  is  some  taint  of  insanity,  provided  only  that 
irresponsibility  is  not  hopelessly  complete. 

In  few  aspects  of  this  theme  do  conceptions  of  and 
practises  in  regard  to  adolescence  need  more  radical 
reconstruction.  /A  mere  accident  of  circumstance  often 
condemns  to  criminal  careers  youths  capable  of  the 
highest  service  to  society,  and  for  a  mere  brief  season 
of  temperamental  outbreak  or  obstreperousness  exposes 
them  to  all  the  infamy  to  which  ignorant  and  cruel 
public  opinion  condemns  all  those  who  have  once  been 
detected  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  invisible  and  ar- 
bitrary line  of  rectitude.  ''^The  heart  of  criminal  psy- 
chology is  here;  and  not  only  that,  but  I  would  con- 
clude with  a  most  earnest  personal  protest  against  the 
current  methods  of  teaching  and  studying  ethics  in  our 
academic  institutions  as  a  speculative,  historical,  and 
abstract  thing.  Here  in  the  concrete  and  saliently 
objective  facts  of  crime  it  should  have  its  beginning, 
and  have  more  blood  and  body  in  it  by  getting  again 
close  to  the  hot  battle  line  between  vice  and  virtue, 
and  then  only,  when  balanced  and  sanified  by  a  rich 
ballast  of  facts,  can  it  with  advantage  slowly  work  its 
way  over  to  the  larger  and  higher  philosophy  of  con- 
duct, which,  when  developed  from  this  basis,  will  be 
a  radically  different  thing  from  the  shadowy  phantom, 
schematic  speculations  of  many  contemporary  moralists, 
taught  in  our  schools  and  colleges. 


140 


CHAPTER   VIII 

BIOGRAPHIES   OF   YOUTH 

Knightly  ideals  and  honor — Thirty  adolescents  from  Shakespeare—^ 
Goethe — C.  D.  Warner — Aldrich — The  fugitive  nature  of  adolescent 
experience — Extravagance  of  autobiographies — Stories  that  attach  to 
great  names — Some  typical  crazes — Illustrations  from  George  Eliot, 
Edison,  Chatterton,  Hawthorne,  Whittier,  Spencer,  Huxley,  Lyell, 
Byron,  Heine,  Napoleon,  Darwin,  Martineau,  Agassiz,  Madame  Ro- 
land. Louisa  Alcott,  F.  H.  Burnett,  Helen  Keller,  Marie  Bashkirtseff, 
Mary  MacLane,  Ada  Negri,  De  Quincey,  Stuart  Mill,  Jefferies,  and 
scores  of  others. 

The  knightly  ideals  and  those  of  secular  life  gen- 
erally during  the  middle  ages  and  later  were  in  striking 
contrast  to  the  ascetic  ideals  of  the  early  Christian 
Church;  in  some  respects  they  were  like  those  of  the 
Greeks.  Honor  was  the  leading  ideal,  and  muscular  de- 
velopment and  that  of  the  body  were  held  in  high 
respect;  so  that  the  spirit  of  the  age  fostered  concep- 
tions not  unlike  those  of  the  Japanese  Bushido.  Where 
elements  of  Christianity  were  combined  with  this  we 
have  the  spirit  of  the  pure  chivalry  of  King  Arthur  and 
the  Knights  of  the  Round  Table,  which  affords  perhaps 
the  very  best  ideals  for  youth  to  be  found  in  history, 
as  we  shall  see  more  fully  later. 

In  a  very  interesting  paper,  entitled  "  Shakespeare 
and  Adolescence,"  Dr.  M.  F.  Libby^  very  roughly  reck- 
ons  "  seventy-four   interesting   adolescents    among   the 

1  Pedagogical  Seminary,  June,  1901,  vol.  8,  pp.  163-205. 
141 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

comedies,  forty-six  among  the  tragedies,  and  nineteen 
among  the  histories.''  He  selects  "  thirty  characters 
who,  either  on  account  of  direct  references  to  their  age, 
or  because  of  their  love-stories,  or  because  they  show  the 
emotional  and  intellectual  plasticity  of  youth,  may  be 
regarded  as  typical  adolescents."  His  list  is  as  fol- 
lows: Romeo,  Juliet,  Hamlet,  Ophelia,  Imogen,  Perdita, 
Arviragus,  Guiderius,  Palamon,  Arcite,  Emilia,  Ferdi- 
nand, Miranda,  Isabella,  Mariana,  Orlando,  Rosalind, 
Biron,  Portia,  Jessica,  Phebe,  Katharine,  Helena,  Viola, 
Troilus,  Cressida,  Cassio,  Marina,  Prince  Hal,  and  Rich- 
ard of  Gloucester.  The  proof  of  the  youth  of  these  char- 
acters, as  set  forth,  is  of  various  kinds,  and  Libby  holds 
that  besides  these,  the  sonnets  and  poems  perhaps  show  a 
yet  greater,  more  profound  and  concentrated  knowledge 
of  adolescence.  He  thinks  **  Venus  and  Adonis  "  a 
successful  attempt  to  treat  sex  in  a  candid,  naive  way, 
if  it  be  read  as  it  was  meant,  as  a  catharsis  of  passion,  in 
which  is  latent  a  whole  philosophy  of  art.  To  some  ex- 
tent he  also  finds  the  story  of  the  Passionate  Pilgrim 
"  replete  with  the  deepest  knowledge  of  the  passions  of 
early  adolescence. ' '  The  series  culminates  in  Sonnet  116, 
which  makes  love  the  sole  beacon  of  humanity.  It 
might  be  said  that  it  is  connected  by  a  straight  line  with 
the  best  teachings  of  Plato,  and  that  here  humanity 
picked  up  the  clue,  lost,  save  with  some  Italian  poets, 
in  the  great  interval. 

In  looking  over  current  autobiographies  of  well-known 
modern  men  who  deal  with  their  boyhood,  one  finds 
curious  extremes.  On  the  one  hand  are  those  of  which 
Goethe's  is  a  type,  where  details  are  dwelt  upon  at  great 
length  with  careful  and  suggestive  philosophic  reflec- 
tions.    The  development  of  his  own  tastes,   capacities, 

142 


BIOGRAPHIES  OF  YOUTH 

and  his  entire  adult  consciousness  was  assumed  to  be  due 
to  the  incidents  of  childhood  and  youth,  and  especially 
the  latter  stage  was  to  him  full  of  the  most  serious  prob- 
lems essential  to  his  self-knowledge;  and  in  the  story  of 
his  life  he  has  exploited  all  available  resources  of  this 
genetic  period  of  storm  and  stress  more  fully  perhaps 
than  any  other  writer.  At  the  other  extreme,  we  have 
writers  like  Charles  Dudley  Warner,^  a  self-made  man, 
whose  early  life  was  passed  on  the  farm,  and  who  holds 
his  own  boyhood  there  in  greater  contempt  than  perhaps 
any  other  reputable  writer  of  such  reminiscences.  All 
the  incidents  are  treated  not  only  with  seriousness,  but 
with  a  forced  drollery  and  catchy  superficiality  which 
reflect  unfavorably  at  almost  every  point  upon  the  mem- 
bers of  his  household,  who  are  caricatured;  all  the  pre- 
cious associations  of  early  life  on  a  New  England  farm 
are  not  only  made  absurd,  but  from  beginning  to  end  his 
book  has  not  a  scintilla  of  instruction  or  suggestion  for 
those  that  are  interested  in  child  life.  Aldrich  ^  is  bet- 
ter, and  we  have  interesting  glimpses  of  the  pet  horse 
and  monkeys,  of  his  fighting  the  boy  bully,  running 
away,  and  falling  in  love  with  an  older  girl  whose  en- 
gagement later  blighted  his  life.  Howells,^  White,* 
Mitter,^  Grahame,®  Heidi,^  and  Mrs.  Burnett,^  might 
perhaps  represent  increasing  grades  of  merit  in  thic;  field 
in  this  respect. 

Yoder,®  in  his  interesting  study  of  the  boyhood  of 
great  men,  has  called  attention  to  the  deplorable  careless- 

1  Being  a  Boy.  2  Story  of  a  Bad  Boy. 

3  A  Boy's  TowTi,  *  Court  of  Boyville. 

6  The  Spoilt  Child,  by  Peary  Chandmitter.     Translated  by  G.  D.  Os- 
well.     Thacker,  Spink  and  Co.,  Calcutta,  1893.  «  The  Golden  Age. 

7  Frau  Spyri.  »  The  One  I  Knew  the  Best  of  All. 

9  The  Study  of  the  Boyhood  of  Great  Men.     Pedagogical  Seminary, 
October,  1894,  vol.  3,  pp.  134-156. 

143 


YOUTH  :  ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

ness  of  their  biographers  concerning  the  facts  and  in- 
fluences of  their  youth.  He  advocates  the  great  ped- 
agogic influence  of  biography,  and  would  restore  the 
high  appreciation  of  it  felt  by  the  Bolandists,  which 
Comte's  positivist  calendar,  that  renamed  all  the  days 
of  the  year  from  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  such 
accounts  in  1849,  also  sought  to  revive.  Yoder  selected 
fifty  great  modern  biographies,  autobiographies  pre- 
ferred, for  his  study.  He  found  a  number  of  lives  whose 
equipment  and  momentum  have  been  strikingly  due  to 
some  devoted  aunt,  and  that  give  many  glimpses  of  the 
first  polarization  of  genius  in  the  direction  in  which  fame 
is  later  achieved.  He  holds  that,  while  the  great  men 
excelled  in  memory,  imagination  is  perhaps  still  more 
a  youthful  condition  of  eminence;  magnifies  the  stim- 
ulus of  poverty,  the  fact  that  elder  sons  become  prom- 
inent nearly  twice  as  often  as  younger  ones ;  and  raises 
the  question  whether  too  exuberant  physical  develop- 
ment does  not  dull  genius  and  talent. 

One  striking  and  cardinal  fact  never  to  be  forgotten 
in  considering  its  each  and  every  phenomenon  and  stage 
is  that  the  experiences  of  adolescence  are  extremely  trans- 
itory and  very  easily  forgotten,  so  that  they  are  often 
totally  lost  to  the  adult  consciousness.  Lancaster  ^  ob- 
serves that  we  are  constantly  told  by  adults  past  thirty 
that  they  never  had  this  and  that  experience,  and  that 
those  who  have  had  them  are  abnormal ;  that  they  are  far 
more  rare  than  students  of  childhood  assert,  etc.  He 
says,  ' '  Not  a  single  young  person  with  whom  I  have  had 
free  and  open  conversation  has  been  free  from  serious 
thoughts  of  suicide,"  but  these  are  forgotten  later.  A 
typical  case  of  many  I  could  gather  is  that  of  a  lady,  not 

iThe  Vanishing  Character  of  Adolescent  Experiences.  North- 
western Monthly,  June,  1898,  vol.  8,  p.  644. 

144 


BIOGRAPHIES  OF  YOUTH 

yet  in  middle  life,  precise  and  carefully  trained,  who, 
on  hearing  a  lecture  on  the  typical  phases  of  adolescence, 
declared  that  she  must  have  been  abnormal,  for  she 
knew  nothing  of  any  of  these  experiences.  Her  mother, 
however,  produced  her  diary,  and  there  she  read  for  the 
first  time  since  it  was  written,  beginning  in  the  January 
of  her  thirteenth  year,  a  long  series  of  resolutions  which 
revealed  a  course  of  conduct  that  brought  the  color  to 
her  face,  that  she  should  have  found  it  necessary  to 
pledge  not  to  swear,  lie,  etc.,  and  which  showed  conclu- 
sively that  she  had  passed  through  about  all  the  phases 
described.  These  phenomena  are  sometimes  very  in- 
tense and  may  come  late  in  life,  but  it  is  impossible  to 
remember  feelings  and  emotions  with  definiteness,  and 
these  now  make  up  a  large  part  of  life.  Hence  we  are 
prone  to  look  with  some  incredulity  upon  the  immediate 
records  of  the  tragic  emotions  and  experiences  typical 
and  normal  at  this  time,  because  development  has  scored 
away  their  traces  from  the  conscious  soul. 

There  is  a  wall  around  the  town  of  Boyville,  says 
White,^  in  substance,  which  is  impenetrable  when  its 
gates  have  once  shut  upon  youth.  An  adult  may  peer 
over  the  wall  and  try  to  ape  the  games  inside,  but  finds 
it  all  a  mockery  and  himself  banished  among  the  pur- 
blind grown-ups.  The  town  of  Boyville  was  old  when 
Nineveh  w^as  a  hamlet;  it  is  ruled  by  ancient  laws;  has 
its  own  rulers  and  idols ;  and  only  the  dim,  unreal  noises 
of  the  adult  world  about  it  have  changed. 

In  exploring  such  sources  we  soon  see  how  few  writ- 
ers have  given  true  pictures  of  the  chief  traits  of  this 
developmental  period,  which  can  rarely  be  ascertained 
with  accuracy.     The  adult  finds  it  hard  to  recall  the 

1  The  Court  of  Boyville,  by  William  Allen  White.     New  York,  1899, 
p.  358. 

145 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

emotional  and  instinctive  life  of  the  teens  which  is  ban- 
ished without  a  trace,  save  as  scattered  hints  may  be 
gathered  from  diaries,  chance  experiences,  or  the  recol- 
lections of  others.  But  the  best  observers  see  but  very 
little  of  what  goes  on  in  the  youthful  soul,  the  develop- 
ment of  which  is  very  largely  subterranean.  Only  when 
the  feelings  erupt  in  some  surprising  way  is  the  process 
manifest.  The  best  of  these  sources  are  autobiographies, 
and* of  these  only  few  are  full  of  the  details  of  this  stage. 
Just  as  in  the  mythic  prehistoric  stage  of  many  nations 
there  is  a  body  of  legendary  matter,  which  often  reap- 
pears in  somewhat  different  form,  so  there  is  a  floating 
plankton-like  mass  of  tradition  and  storiology  that 
seems  to  attach  to  eminence  wherever  it  emerges  and  is 
repeated  over  and  over  again,  concerning  the  youth  of 
men  who  later  achieve  distinction,  which  biographers 
often  incorporate  and  attach  to  the  time,  place,  and 
person  of  their  heroes. 

As  Burnham  ^  well  intimates,  many  of  the  literary 
characterizations  of  adolescence  are  so  marked  by  ex- 
travagance, and  sometimes  even  by  the  struggle  for  lit- 
erary effects,  that  they  are  not  always  the  best  documents, 
although  often  based  on  personal  experience.  Con- 
fessionalism  is  generally  overdrawn,  distorted,  and  es- 
pecially the  pains  of  this  age  are  represented  as  too  keen. 
Of  George  Eliot's  types  of  adolescent  character,  this  may 
best  be  seen  in  Maggie  Tulliver,  with  her  enthusiastic 
self-renunciation,  with  ''  her  volcanic  upheavings  of  im- 
prisoned passions,"  with  her  ''wide,  hopeless  yearning 
for  that  something,  whatever  it  was,  that  was  greatest 
and  best  on  this  earth/'  and  in  Gwendolen,  who,  from 
the  moment  she  caught   Deronda's  eye,  was  '*  totally 

»  The  Study  of  Adolescence.  Pedagogical  Seminary,  June,  1891, 
vol.  1,  pp.  174-195. 

146 


BIOGRAPHIES  OF  YOUTH 

swayed  in  feeling  and  action  by  the  presence  of  a  person 
of  the  other  sex  whom  she  had  never  seen  before." 
There  was  ''  the  resolute  action  from  instinct  and  the 
setting  at  defiance  of  calculation  and  reason,  the  want 
of  any  definite  desire  to  marry,  while  all  her  conduct 
tended  to  promote  proposals."  Exaggeration,  although 
not  the  perversions  of  this  age  often  found  in  adult 
characterizations,  is  a  marked  trait  of  the  writings  of 
adolescents,  whose  conduct  meanwhile  may  appear 
rational,  so  that  this  suggests  that  consciousness  may  at 
this  stage  serve  as  a  harmless  vent  for  tendencies  that 
would  otherwise  cause  great  trouble  if  turned  to  practi- 
cal affairs.  If  Harmodius  and  Aristogeiton,  the  ado- 
lescent tyrant  slayers  of  Greece,  had  been  theorists,  they 
might  have  been  harmless  on  the  principle  that  its 
analysis  tends  to  dissipate  emotion. 

Lancaster  ^  gathered  and  glanced  over  a  thousand 
biographies,  from  which  he  selected  200  for  careful 
study,  choosing  them  to  show  different  typical  directions 
of  activity.  Of  these,  120  showed  a  distinct  craze  for 
reading  in  adolescence;  109  became  great  lovers  of 
nature;  58  wrote  poetry,  58  showed  a  great  and  sudden 
development  of  energy;  55  showed  great  eagerness  for 
school;  53  devoted  themselves  for  a  season  to  art  and 
music ;  53  became  very  religious ;  *51  left  home  in  the 
teens ;  51  showed  dominant  instincts  of  leadership  ;  49  had 
great  longings  of  many  kinds;  46  developed  scientific 
tastes;  41  grew  very  anxious  about  the  future;  34  de- 
veloped increased  keenness  of  sensation  or  at  least  power 
of  observation;  in  32  cases  health  was  better;  31  were 
passionately  altruistic;  23  became  idealists;  23  showed 
powers  of  invention;  17  were  devoted  to  older  friends; 

1  Lancaster:  The  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of  Adolescence.     Peda- 
gogical Seminary,  July,  1897,  vol.  5,  p.  106. 

147 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

15  would  reform  society;  7  hated  school.  These,  like 
many  other  statistics,  have  only  indicative  value,  as  they 
are  based  on  numbers  that  are  not  large  enough  and 
upon  returns  not  always  complete. 
hK  few  typical  instances  from  Lancaster  must  here 
suffice.  Savonarola  was  solitary,  pondering,  meditating, 
felt  profoundly  the  evils  of  the  world  and  need  of  re- 
form, and  at  twenty-two  spent  a  whole  night  planning 
his  career.  Shelley  during  these  years  was  unsocial, 
much  alone,  fantastic,  wandered  much  by  moonlight 
communing  with  stars  and  moon,  was  attached  to  an 
older  man.  Beecher  was  intoxicated  with  nature,  which 
he  declared  afterward  to  have  been  the  inspiration  of  his 
life.  George  Eliot  at  thirteen  had  a  passion  for  music  and 
became  a  clever  pianist.  At  sixteen  she  was  religious, 
founded  societies  for  the  poor  and  for  animals,  and 
had  flitting  spells  of  misanthropy.  Edison  undertook 
to  read  the  Detroit  Free  Library  through,  read  fifteen 
solid  feet  as  the  books  stand  on  the  shelves,  was  stopped, 
and  says  he  has  read  comparatively  little  since.  Tolstoi 
found  the  aspect  of  things  suddenly  changed.  Nature 
put  on  a  new  appearance.  He  felt  he  might  commit 
the  most  dreadful  crimes  with  no  purpose  save  curiosity 
and  the  need  of  action.  The  future  looked  gloomy.  He 
became  furiously  angry  without  cause;  thought  he  was 
lost,  hated  by  everybody,  was  perhaps  not  the  son  of  his 
father,  etc.  At  seventeen  he  was  solitary,  musing  about 
immortality,  human  destiny,  feeling  death  at  hand,  giv- 
ing up  his  studies,  fancying  himself  a  great  man  with 
new  truths  for  humanity.  By  and  by  he  took  up  the  old 
virtuous  course  of  life  with  fresh  power,  new  resolutions, 
with  the  feeling  that  he  had  lost  much  time.  He  had  a 
deep  religious  experience  at  seventeen  and  wept  for  joy 
over  his  new  life.     He  had  a  period  before  twenty  when 

148 


BIOGRAPHIES   OF  YOUTH 

he  told  desperate  lies,  for  which  he  could  not  account, 
then  a  passion  for  music,  and  later  for  French  novels. 
Rousseau  at  this  age  was  discontented,  immensely  in  love, 
wept  often  without  cause,  etc.  Keats  had  a  great  change 
at  fourteen,  wrestling  with  frequent  obscure  and  pro- 
found stirrings  of  soul,  with  a  sudden  hunger  for  knowl- 
edge which  consumed  his  days  with  fire,  and  "  with 
passionate  longing  to  drain  the  cup  of  experience  at  a 
draft."  He  was  "  at  the  morning  hour  when  the  whole 
world  turns  to  gold."  "  The  boy  had  suddenly  become 
a  poet. ' '  Chatterton  was  too  proud  to  eat  a  gift  dinner, 
though  nearly  starved,  and  committed  suicide  at  seven- 
teen for  lack  of  appreciation.  John  Hunter  was  dull 
and  hated  study,  but  at  twenty  his  mind  awoke  as  did 
that  of  Patrick  Henry,  who  before  was  a  lonely  wan- 
derer, sitting  idly  for  hours  under  the  trees.  Alexander 
Murray  awoke  to  life  at  fifteen  and  acquired  several 
languages  in  less  than  two  years.  Gifford  was  dis- 
traught for  lack  of  reading,  went  to  sea  at  thirteen,  be- 
came a  shoemaker,  studying  algebra  late  at  night,  was 
savagely  unsociable,  sunk  into  torpor  from  which  he  was 
roused  to  do  splenetic  and  vexatious  tricks,  which  alien- 
ated his  friends.  Rittenhouse  at  fourteen  was  a  plow- 
boy,  covering  the  fences  with  figures,  musing  on  infinite 
time  and  space.  Benjamin  Thompson  was  roused  to  a 
frenzy  for  sciences  at  fifteen ;  at  seventeen  walked  nine 
miles  daily  to  attend  lectures  at  Cambridge;  and  at 
nineteen  married  a  widow  of  thirty-three.  Franklin  had 
a  passion  for  the  sea ;  at  thirteen  read  poetry  all  night ; 
wrote  verses  and  sold  them  on  the  streets  of  Boston; 
doubted  everything  at  fifteen ;  left  home  for  good  at  sev- 
enteen; started  the  first  public  library  in  Philadelphia 
before  he  was  twenty-one.  Robert  Fulton  was  poor, 
dreamy,  mercurial,  devoted  to  nature,  art,  and  literature. 

149 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

He  became  a  painter  of  talent,  then  a  poet,  and  left  home 
at  seventeen.  Bryant  was  sickly  till  fourteen  and  be- 
came permanently  well  thereafter;  was  precociously  de- 
voted to  nature,  religion,  prayed  for  poetic  genius  and 
wrote  Thanatopsis  before  he  was  eighteen.  Jefferson 
doted  on  animals  and  nature  at  fourteen,  and  at  seven- 
teen studied  fifteen  hours  a  day.  Garfield,  though  liv- 
ing in  Ohio,  longed  for  the  sea,  and  ever  after  this 
period  the  sight  of  a  ship  gave  him  a  strange  thrill. 
Hawthorne  was  devoted  to  the  sea  and  wanted  to  sail  on 
and  on  forever  and  never  touch  shore  again.  He  would 
roam  through  the  Maine  woods  alone ;  was  haunted  by  the 
fear  that  he  would  die  before  twenty-five.  Peter  Cooper 
left  home  at  seventeen;  was  passionately  altruistic;  and 
at  eighteen  vowed  he  would  build  a  place  like  his  New 
York  Institute.  Whittier  at  fourteen  found  a  copy  of 
Burns,  which  excited  him  and  changed  the  current  of  his 
life.  Holmes  had  a  passion  for  flowers,  broke  into 
poetry  at  fifteen,  and  had  very  romantic  attachments 
to  certain  trees.  J.  T.  Trowbridge  learned  German, 
French,  and  Latin  alone  before  twenty-one;  composed 
poetry  at  the  plow  and  wrote  it  out  in  the  even- 
ing. Joseph  Henry  followed  a  rabbit  under  the  Pub- 
lic Library  at  Albany,  found  a  hole  in  the  floor  that 
admitted  him  to  the  shelves,  and,  unknown  to  any  one, 
read  all  the  fiction  the  library  contained,  then  turned 
to  physics,  astronomy,  and  chemistry,  and  developed  a 
passion  for  the  sciences.  He  was  stage-struck,  and  be- 
came a  good  amateur  actor.  H.  II.  Boyesen  was  thrilled 
by  nature  and  by  the  thought  that  he  was  a  Norseman. 
He  had  several  hundred  pigeons,  rabbits,  and  other  pets ; 
loved  to  be  in  the  woods  at  night;  on  leaving  home  for 
school  was  found  with  his  arms  around  the  neck  of  a 
calf  to  which  he  was  saying  good-by.     Maxwell,  at  six- 

150 


BIOGRAPHIES  OF  YOUTH 

teen,  had  almost  a  horror  of  destroying  a  leaf,  flower, 
or  fly.  Jahn  found  growing  in  his  heart,  at  this  age,  an 
inextinguishable  feeling  for  right  and  WTong — which 
later  he  thought  the  cause  of  all  his  inner  weal  and  outer 
woe.  When  Nansen  was  in  his  teens  he  spent  weeks  at 
a  time  alone  in  the  forest,  full  of  longings,  courage, 
altruism,  wanted  to  get  away  from  every  one  and  live 
like  Crusoe.  T.  B.  Reed,  at  twelve  and  thirteen,  had  a 
passion  for  reading;  ran  away  at  seventeen;  painted, 
acted,  and  wrote  poetry.  Cartw^right,  at  sixteen,  heard 
voices  from  the  sky  saying,  ''  Look  above,  thy  sins 
are  forgiven  thee."  Herbert  Spencer  became  an  engi- 
neer at  seventeen,  after  one  idle  year.  He  never  went  to 
school,  but  was  a  private  pupil  of  his  uncle.  Sir  James 
Mackintosh  grew  fond  of  history  at  eleven;  fancied  he 
was  the  Emperor  of  Constantinople;  loved  solitude  at 
thirteen;  wrote  poetry  at  fourteen;  and  fell  in  love  at 
seventeen.  Thomas  Buxton  loved  dogs,  horses,  and  lit- 
erature, and  combined  these  while  riding  on  an  old  horse. 
At  sixteen  he  fell  in  love  with  an  older  literary  woman, 
which  aroused  every  latent  power  to  do  or  die,  and  there- 
after he  took  all  the  school  prizes.  Scott  began  to  like 
poetry  at  thirteen.  Pascal  wrote  treatises  on  conic  sec- 
tions at  sixteen  and  invented  his  arithmetical  machine 
at  nineteen.  Nelson  went  to  sea  at  twelve ;  commanded 
a  boat  in  peril  at  fifteen,  which  at  the  same  age  he  left  to 
fight  a  polar  bear.  Banks,  the  botanist,  was  idle  and 
listless  till  fourteen,  could  not  travel  the  road  marked 
out  for  him;  w^hen  coming  home  from  bathing,  he  was 
struck  by  the  beauty  of  the  flowers  and  at  once  began  his 
career.  Montcalm  and  Wolfe  both  distinguished  them- 
selves as  leaders  in  battle  at  sixteen.  Lafayette  came  to 
America  at  nineteen,  thrilled  by  our  bold  strike  for 
liberty.  Gustavus  Adolphus  declared  his  own  majority 
11  151 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

at  seventeen  and  was  soon  famous.  Ida  Lewis  rescued 
four  men  in  a  boat  at  sixteen.  Joan  of  Are  began  at 
thirteen  to  have  the  visions  which  were  the  later  guide 
of  her  life. 

Mr.  Swift  has  collected  interesting  biographical  ma- 
terial ^  to  show  that  school  work  is  analytic,  w^hile  life 
is  synthetic,  and  how  the  narrowness  of  the  school  en- 
closure prompts  many  youth  in  the  wayward  age  to 
jump  fences  and  seek  new  and  more  alluring  pastures. 
According  to  school  standards,  many  were  dull  and  in- 
dolent, but  their  nature  was  too  large  or  their  ideals 
too  high  to  be  satisfied  with  it.  Wagner  at  the  Niko- 
laischule  at  Leipzig  was  relegated  to  the  third  form, 
having  already  attained  to  the  second  at  Dresden,  which 
so  embittered  him  that  he  lost  all  taste  for  philology 
and,  in  his  own  words,  "  became  lazy  and  slovenly." 
Priestley  never  improved  by  any  systematic  course  of 
study.  W.  H.  Gibson  was  very  slow  and  was  rebuked 
for  wasting  his  time  in  sketching.  James  Russell  Lowell 
was  reprimanded,  at  first  privately  and  then  publicly, 
in  his  sophomore  year  *'  for  general  negligence  in 
themes,  forensics,  and  recitations,"  and  finally  sus- 
pended in  1838  *'  on  account  of  continued  neglect  of 
his  college  duties."  In  early  life  Goldsmith's  teacher 
thought  him  the  dullest  boy  she  had  ever  taught.  His 
tutor  called  him  ignorant  and  stupid.  Irving  says  that 
a  lad  ''  whose  passions  are  not  strong  enough  in  youth 
to  mislead  him  from  that  path  of  science  which  his 
tutors,  and  not  his  inclinations,  have  chalked  out,  by 
four  or  five  years'  perseverance,  will  probably  obtain 
every  advantage  and  honor  his  college  can  bestow.     I 


1  standards  of  Eflaciency  in  School  and  in  Life.     Pedagogical  Semi- 
nary, March,  1903,  vol.  10,  pp.  3-22. 

152 


BIOGRAPHIES  OF   YOUTH 

would  compare  the  man  whose  youth  has  been  thus 
passed  in  the  tranquility  of  dispassionate  prudence,  to 
liquors  that  never  ferment,  and,  consequently,  continue 
always  muddy."  Huxley  detested  writing  till  past 
twenty.  His  schooling  was  very  brief,  and  he  declared 
that  those  set  over  him  ''  cared  about  as  much  for  his 
intellectual  and  moral  welfare  as  if  they  were  baby 
farmers."  Humphry  Davy  was  faithful  but  showed 
no  talent  in  school,  having  "  the  reputation  of  being  an 
idle  boy,  with  a  gift  for  making  verses,  but  with  no 
aptitude  for  studies  of  a  graver  sort."  Later  in  life 
he  considered  it  fortunate  that  he  was  left  so  much  to 
himself.  Byron  was  so  poor  a  scholar  that  he  only 
stood  at  the  head  of  the  class  when,  as  was  the  custom, 
it  was  inverted,  and  the  bantering  master  repeatedly 
said  to  him,  "  Now,  George,  man,  let  me  see  how  soon 
you'll  be  at  the  foot."  Schiller's  negligence  and  lack 
of  alertness  called  for  repeated  reproof,  and  his  final 
school  thesis  was  unsatisfactory.  Hegel  was  a  poor 
scholar,  and  at  the  university  it  was  stated  *'  that  he 
was  of  middling  industry  and  knowledge  but  especially 
deficient  in  philosophy."  John  Hunter  nearly  became 
a  cabinetmaker.  Lyell  had  excessive  aversion  to  work. 
George  Combe  wondered  why  he  was  so  inferior  to 
other  boys  in  arithmetic.  Heine  agreed  with  the  monks 
that  Greek  was  the  invention  of  the  devil.  *'  God 
knows  what  misery  I  suffered  with  it."  He  hated 
French  meters,  and  his  teacher  vowed  he  had  no  soul 
for  poetry.  He  idled  away  his  time  at  Bonn,  and  was 
"  horribly  bored  "  by  the  ''  odious,  stiff,  cut-and-dried 
tone  "  of  the  leathery  professors.  Humboldt  was 
feeble  as  a  child  and  "  had  less  facility  in  his  studies 
than  most  children."  *'  Until  I  reached  the  age  of 
sixteen,"    he    says,    ''  I    showed    little    inclination    for 

153 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

scientific  pursuits. ' '  He  was  essentially  self-taught,  and 
acquired  most  of  his  knowledge  rather  late  in  life.  At 
nineteen  he  had  never  heard  of  botany.  Sheridan  was 
called  inferior  to  many  of  his  schoolfellows.  He  was 
remarkable  for  nothing  but  idleness  and  winning  man- 
ners, and  was  ''  not  only  slovenly  in  construing,  but 
unusually  defective  in  his  Greek  grammar."  Swift 
was  refused  his  degree  because  of  "  dulness  and  insuffi- 
ciency," but  given  it  later  as  a  special  favor.  Words- 
worth was  disappointing.  General  Grant  was  never 
above  mediocrity,  and  w^as  dropped  as  corporal  in  the 
junior  class  and  served  the  last  year  as  a  private.  W. 
H.  Seward  was  called  * '  too  stupid  to  learn. ' '  Napoleon 
graduated  forty-second  in  his  class.  "  Who,"  asks 
Swift,  *'  were  the  forty-one  above  him?  "  Darwin  w^as 
''  singularly  incapable  of  mastering  any  language." 
When  he  left  school,  he  says,  "  I  was  considered  by  all 
my  masters  and  by  my  father  as  a  very  ordinary  boy, 
rather  below  the  common  standard  in  intellect.  To  my 
deep  mortification,  my  father  once  said  to  me,  '  You 
care  for  nothing  but  shooting,  dogs,  and  rat-catching, 
and  you  will  be  a  disgrace  to  yourself  and  to  all  your 
family.'  "  Harriet  Martineau  was  thought  very  dull. 
Though  a  born  musician,  she  could  do  absolutely  noth- 
ing in  the  presence  of  her  irritable  master.  She  wrote 
a  cramped,  untidy  scrawl  until  past  twenty.  A  visit 
to  some  very  brilliant  cousins  at  the  age  of  sixteen  had 
much  to  do  in  arousing  her  backward  nature.  At  this 
age  J.  Pierpont  Morgan  wrote  poetry  and  was  devoted 
to  mathematics.  Booker  T.  Washington,  at  about  thir- 
teen or  fourteen  (he  does  not  know  the  date  of  his  birth) , 
felt  the  new  meaning  of  life  and  started  off  on  foot  to 
Hampton,  five  hundred  miles  away,  not  knowing  even 
the  direction,  sleeping  under  a  sidewalk  his  first  night 

154 


BIOGRAPHIES   OF  YOUTH 

in  Richmond.  Vittorino  da  Feltre/  according  to  Dr. 
Burnham,  had  a  slow,  tardy  development,  lingering  on 
a  sluggish  dead  level  from  ten  to  fourteen,  which  to  his 
later  unfoldment  was  as  the  barren,  improving  years 
sometimes  called  the  middle  ages,  compared  with  the 
remainder  which  followed  when  a  new  world-conscious- 
ness intensified  his  personality. 

Lancaster's  summaries  show  that  of  100  actors,  the 
average  age  of  their  first  great  success  was  exactly  18 
years.  Those  he  chose  had  taken  to  the  stage  of  their 
own  accord,  for  actors  are  more  born  than  made. 
Nearly  half  of  them  were  Irish,  the  unemotional  Ameri- 
can stock  having  furnished  far  less.  Few  make  their 
first  success  on  the  stage  after  22,  but  from  16  to  20 
is  the  time  to  expect  talent  in  this  line,  although  there 
is  a  second  rise  in  his  curve  before  and  still  more  after 
25,  representing  those  whose  success  is  more  due  to 
intellect.  Taking  the  average  age  of  100  novelists  when 
their  first  story  met  with  public  approval,  the  curve 
reaches  its  highest  point  between  30  and  35.  Averag- 
ing 53  poets,  the  age  at  which  most  first  poems  were  pub- 
lished falls  between  15  and  20.  The  average  age  at 
which  first  publication  showed  talent  he  places  at  18, 
which  is  in  striking  contrast  with  the  average  age  of 
inventors  at  time  of  the  first  patent,  which  is  33  years. 

A  still  more  striking  contrast  is  that  between  100 
musicians  and  100  professional  men.  Music  is  by  far 
the  most  precocious  and  instinctive  of  all  talents.  The 
average  age  when  marked  talent  was  first  shown  is  a 
little  less  than  10  years,  95  per  cent  showed  rare  talent 
before  16,  while  the  professional  men  graduated  at  an 
average  age  of  24  years  and  11  months,  and  10  years 

1  See  also  Vittorino  da  Feltre  and  other  Humanist  Educators,  by 
W.  H.  Woodward.     Cambridge  University  Press,  1897. 

155 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

must  be  added  to  mark  the  point  of  recognized  success. 
Of  53  artists,  90  per  cent  showed  talent  before  20,  the 
average  age  being  17.2  years.  Of  100  pioneers  who 
made  their  mark  in  the  Far  West,  leaving  home  to  seek 
fortunes  near  the  frontier,  the  greatest  number  de- 
parted before  they  were  18.  Of  118  scientists,  Lancas- 
ter estimates  that  their  life  interest  first  began  to  glow 
on  the  average  a  little  before  they  were  19.  In  general, 
those  whose  success  is  based  on  emotional  traits  antedate 
by  some  years  those  whose  renown  is  more  purely  in 
intellectual  spheres,  and  taking  all  together,  the  curves 
of  the  first  class  culminate  between  18  and  20. 

While  men  devoted  to  physical  science,  and  their  bi- 
ographers, give  us  perhaps  the  least  breezy  accounts  of 
this  seething  age,  it  may  be,  because  they  mature  late, 
nearly  all  show  its  ferments  and  its  circumnutations,  as 
a  few  almost  random  illustrations  clearly  show : 

Tycho  Brahe,  born  in  1546  of  illustrious  Danish  stock,  was  adopted 
by  an  uncle,  and  entered  the  University  of  Copenhagen  at  thirteen, 
where  multiplication,  division,  philosophy,  and  metaphysics  were 
taught.  When  he  was  fourteen,  an  eclipse  of  the  sun  occurred,  which 
aroused  so  much  interest  that  he  decided  to  devote  himself  to  the 
study  of  the  heavenly  bodies.  He  was  able  to  construct  a  series  of 
interesting  instruments  on  a  progressive  scale  of  size,  and  finally  to 
erect  the  great  Observatory  of  Uraniberg  on  the  Island  of  Hven. 
Strange  to  say,  his  scientific  conclusions  had  for  him  profound 
astrological  significance.  An  important  new  star  he  declared  was 
"at  first  like  Venus  and  Jupiter,  and  its  effects  will  therefore  first  be 
pleasant;  but  as  it  then  became  like  Mars,  there  will  next  come  a 
period  of  wars,  seditions,  captivity,  and  death  of  princes,  and  de- 
struction of  cities,  together  with  dryness  and  fiery  meteors  in  the 
air,  pestilence,  and  venomous  snakes.  Lastly,  the  star  became  like 
Saturn,  and  thus  will  finally  come  a  time  of  want,  death,  imprison- 
ment, and  all  kinds  of  sad  things!"  He  says  that  "a  special  use  of 
astronomy  is  that  it  enables  us  to  draw  conclusions  from  the  move- 
ments in  the  celestial  regions  as  to  human  fate."  He  labored  on  his 
island  twenty  years.     He  was  always  versifying,  and  inscribed  a 

156 


BIOGRAPHIES   OF  YOUTH 

poem  over  the  entrance  of  his  underground  observatory  expressing 
the  astonishment  of  Urania  at  finding  in  the  interior  of  the  earth  a 
cavern  devoted  to  the  study  of  the  heavens. 

Galileo  ^  was  born  in  1564  of  a  Florentine  noble,  who  was  poor. 
As  a  youth  he  became  an  excellent  lutist,  then  thought  of  devoting 
himself  to  painting,  but  when  he  w^as  seventeen  studied  medicine, 
and  at  the  University  of  Pisa  fell  in  love  with  mathematics. 

Isaac  Newton,  2  born  in  1642,  very  frail  and  sickly,  solitary,  had  a 
very  low  place  in  the  class  lists  of  his  school;  wrote  poetry,  and  at 
sixteen  tried  farming.  In  one  of  his  university  examinations  in 
Euclid  he  did  so  poorly  as  to  incur  special  censure.  His  first  in- 
centive to  diligent  study  came  from  being  severely  kicked  by  a  high 
class  boy.  He  then  resolved  to  pass  him  in  studies,  and  soon  rose 
to  the  head  of  the  school.  He  made  many  ingenious  toys  and  wind- 
mills; a  carriage,  the  wheels  of  which  were  driven  by  the  hands  of 
the  occupants,  and  a  clock  which  moved  by  water;  curtains,  kites, 
lanterns,  etc.;  and  before  he  was  fourteen  fell  in  love  with  Miss 
Storey,  several  years  older  than  himself.  He  entered  Trinity  College 
at  Cambridge  at  eighteen. 

William  Herschel,  born  in  1738,  at  the  outbreak  of  the  Seven 
Years'  War,  when  he  was  eighteen,  was  a  performer  in  the  regimental 
band,  and  after  a  battle  passed  a  night  in  a  ditch  and  escaped  in 
disguise,  to  England,  where  he  eked  out  a  precarious  livelihood 
by  teaching  music.  He  supported  himself  until  middle  age  as  an 
organist.  In  much  of  his  later  work  he  was  greatly  aided  by  his 
sister  Caroline.  When  he  discovered  a  sixth  planet  he  became  fa- 
mous, and  devoted  himself  exclusively  to  astronomy,  training  his 
only  son  to  follow  in  his  footsteps,  and  dying  in  1822. 

Agassiz  3  at  twelve  had  developed  a  mania  for  collecting.  He 
memorized  Latin  names,  of  which  he  accumulated  "great  volumes  of 
MSS.,"  and  "modestly  expressed  the  hope  that  in  time  he  might  be 
able  to  give  the  name  of  every  known  animal."  At  fourteen  he  re- 
volted at  mercantile  life,  for  which  he  was  designed,  and  issued  a 
manifesto  planning  to  spend  four  years  at  a  German  university,  then 
in  Paris,  when  he  could  begin  to  writ-e.  Books  were  scarce,  and  a 
little  later  he  copied,  with  the  aid  of  his  brother,  several  large  vol- 
umes, and  had  fifty  live  birds  in  his  room  at  one  time. 

1  See  The  Private  Life  of  Galileo;  from  his  Correspondence  and  that 
of  his  Eldest  Daughter.     Anon.     Macmillan,  London,  1870. 

2  See  Sir  David  Brewster's  Life  of  Newton.  Harper,  New  York, 
1874. 

3  Louis  Agassiz,  His  Life  and  Work,  by  C.  F.  Holder.  G.  P.  Put- 
nam's Sons,  New  York,  1893. 

157 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

At  twelve  Huxley  ^  became  an  omnivorous  reader,  and  two  or 
three  years  later  devoured  Hamilton's  Logic  and  became  deeply 
interested  in  metaphysics.  At  fourteen  he  saw  and  participated  in 
his  first  post-mortem  examination,  was  left  in  a  strange  state  of 
apathy  by  it,  and  dates  his  life-long  dyspepsia  to  this  experience. 
His  training  was  irregular ;  he  taught  himself  German  with  a  book  in 
one  hand  while  he  made  hay  with  the  other;  speculated  about  the 
basis  of  matter,  soul,  and  their  relations,  on  radicalism  and  con- 
servatism; and  reproached  himself  that  he  did  not  work  and  get  on 
enough.  At  seventeen  he  attempted  a  comprehensive  classification 
of  human  knowledge,  and  having  finished  his  survey,  resolved  to 
master  the  topics  one  after  another,  striking  them  out  from  his  table 
with  ink  as  soon  as  they  were  done.  "  May  the  list  soon  get  black, 
although  at  present  I  shall  hardly  be  able,  I  am  afraid,  to  spot  the 
paper."  Beneath  the  top  skimmings  of  these  years  he  afterv\^ard 
conceived  seething  depths  working  beneath  the  froth,  but  could 
give  hardly  any  account  of  it.  He  undertook  the  practise  of 
pharmacy,  etc. 

Women  with  literary  gifts  perhaps  surpass  men  in 
their  power  to  reproduce  and  describe  the  great  but  so 
often  evanescent  ebullitions  of  this  age;  perhaps  be- 
cause their  later  lives,  on  account  of  their  more  generic 
nature,  depart  less  from  this  totalizing  period,  or  be- 
cause, although  it  is  psychologically  shorter  than  in  men, 
the  necessities  of  earning  a  livelihood  less  frequently 
arrest  its  full  development,  and  again  because  they  are 
more  emotional,  and  feeling  constitutes  the  chief  psychic 
ingredient  of  this  stage  of  life,  or  they  dwell  more  on 
subjective  states. 

Manon  Philipon  (Madame  Roland)  was  born  in  1754. 
Her  father  was  an  engraver  in  comfortable  circum- 
stances. Her  earliest  enthusiasm  was  for  the  Bible  and 
Lives  of  the  Saints,  and  she  had  almost  a  mania  for 
reading  books  of  any  kind.  In  the  corner  of  her 
father's  workshop  she  would  read  Plutarch  for  hours, 

J  Life  and  Letters  of  Thomas  H.  Huxley,  by  Ills  son  Leonard  Huxley. 
D.  Appleton  and  Co.,  New  York,  1901. 

158 


BIOGRAPHIES   OF  YOUTH 

dream  of  the  past  glories  of  antiquity,  and  exclaim, 
weeping,  "  Why  was  I  not  born  a  Greek?  "  She  de- 
sired to  emulate  the  brave  men  of  old. 

Books  and  flowers  aroused  her  to  dreams  of  enthusiasm,  romantic 
sentiment,  and  lofty  aspiration.  Finding  that  the  French  society 
afforded  no  opportunity  for  heroic  living,  in  her  visionary  fervor  she 
fell  back  upon  a  life  of  religious  mysticism,  and  Xavier,  Loyola,  St. 
Elizabeth,  and  St.  Theresa  became  her  new  idols.  She  longed  to  fol- 
low even  to  the  stake  those  devout  men  and  women  who  had  borne 
obloquy,  poverty,  hunger,  thirst,  wretchedness,  and  the  agony  of  a 
martyr's  death  for  the  sake  of  Jesus.  Her  capacities  for  self-sacrifice 
became  perhaps  her  leading  trait,  always  longing  after  a  grand  life 
like  George  Eliot's  Dorothea  Brooke.  She  was  allowed  at  the  age 
of  eleven  to  enter  a  convent,  where,  shunning  her  companions,  she 
courted  solitude  apart,  under  the  trees,  reading  and  thinking. 
Artificial  as  the  atmosphere  was  here,  it  no  doubt  inspired  her  life 
with  permanent  tenderness  of  feeling  and  loftiness  of  purpose,  and 
gave  a  mystic  quality  to  her  imagination.  Later  she  experienced  to 
the  full  revulsion  of  thought  and  experience  which  comes  when  doubt 
reacts  upon  youthful  credulity.  It  was  the  age  of  the  encyclopedia, 
and  now  she  came  to  doubt  her  creed  and  even  God  and  the  soul,  but 
clung  to  the  Gospels  as  the  best  possible  code  of  morals,  and  later 
realized  that  while  her  intellect  had  wandered  her  heart  had  remained 
constant.  At  seventeen  she  was,  if  not  the  most  beautiful,  perhaps 
the  noblest  woman  in  all  France,  and  here  the  curtain  must  drop  upon 
her  girlhood.  All  her  traits  were,  of  course,  set  off  by  the  great  life 
she  lived  and  the  yet  greater  death  she  died. 

Gifted  people  seem  to  conserve  their  youth  and  to  be 
all  the  more  children,  and  perhaps  especially  all  the  more 
intensely  adolescents,  because  of  their  gifts,  and  it  is 
certainly  one  of  the  marks  of  genius  that  the  plasticity 
and  spontaneity  of  adolescence  persists  into  maturity. 
Sometimes  even  its  passions,  reveries,  and  hoydenish 
freaks  continue.  In  her  ''  Histoire  de  Ma  Vie,"  it  is 
plain  that  George  Sand  inherited  at  this  age  an  unusual 
dower  of  gifts.  She  composed  many  and  interminable 
stories,  carried  on  day  after  day,  so  that  her  confidants 

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YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

tried  to  tease  her  by  asking  if  the  prince  had  got  out 
of  the  forest  yet,  etc.  She  personated  an  echo  and  con- 
versed with  it.  Her  day-dreams  and  plays  were  so 
intense  that  she  often  came  back  from  the  world  of 
imagination  to  reality  with  a  shock.  She  spun  a  weird 
zoological  romance  out  of  a  rustic  legend  of  la  grande 
hete. 

When  her  aunt  sent  her  to  a  convent,  she  passed  a  year  of  rebellion 
and  revolt,  and  was  the  leader  of  les  diables,  or  those  who  refused 
to  be  devout,  and  engaged  in  all  wild  pranks.  At  fifteen  she  became 
profoundly  interested  in  the  hves  of  the  saints,  although  ridiculing 
miracles.  She  entered  one  evening  the  convent  church  for  service, 
without  permission,  which  was  an  act  of  disobedience.  The  mystery 
and  holy  charm  of  it  penetrated  her;  she  forgot  everything  outward 
and  was  left  alone,  and  some  mysterious  change  stole  over  her.  She 
^'  breathed  an  atmosphere  of  ineffable  sweetness  "  more  with  the  mind 
than  the  senses;  had  a  sudden  indescribable  perturbation;  her  eyes 
swam ;  she  was  enveloped  in  a  white  glimmer,  and  heard  a  voice  mur- 
mur the  words  written  under  a  convent  picture  of  St.  Augustine, 
Tolle,  lege,  and  turned  around  thinking  Mother  Alicia  spoke,  but  she 
was  alone.  She  knew  it  was  an  hallucination,  but  saw  that  faith  had 
laid  hold  of  her,  as  she  wished,  by  the  heart,  and  she  sobbed  and 
prayed  to  the  unknown  God  till  a  nun  heard  her  groaning.  At  first 
her  ardor  impelled  her  not  only  to  brave  the  jeers  of  her  madcap 
club  of  harum-scarums  and  tomboys,  but  she  planned  to  become  a 
nun,  until  this  feverish  longing  for  a  recluse  life  passed,  but  left  her 
changed.  ^ 

When  she  passed  from  the  simple  and  Catholic  faith  of  her  gri- 
sette  mother  to  the  atmosphere  of  her  cynical  grandmother  at 
Nohant,  who  was  a  disciple  of  Voltaire,  she  found  herself  in  great 
straits  between  the  profound  sentiments  inspired  by  the  first  com- 
munion and  the  concurrent  contempt  for  this  faith,  instilled  by  her 
grandmother  for  all  these  mummeries  through  which,  however,  for 
conventional  reasons  she  was  obliged  to  pass.  Her  heart  w^as  deeply 
stirred,  and  yet  her  head  holding  all  religion  to  be  fiction  or  metaphor, 
it  occurred  to  her  to  invent  a  story  which  might  be  a  religion  or  a 
religion  which  might  be  a  story  into  any  degree  of  belief  in  which  she 

1  See  also  Sully:  A  Girl's  Religion.  Longman's  Magazine,  May,  1890, 
pp.  89-99. 

160 


BIOGRAPHIES   OF   YOUTH 

could  lapse  at  will.  The  name  and  the  form  of  her  new  deity  was 
revealed  to  her  in  a  dream.  He  was  Corambe,  pure  as  Jesus,  beauti- 
ful as  Gabriel,  as  graceful  as  the  nymphs  and  Orpheus,  less  austere 
than  the  Christian  God,  and  as  much  woman  as  man,  because  she 
could  best  understand  this  sex  from  her  love  for  her  mother.  He  ap- 
peared in  many  aspects  of  physical  and  moral  beauty;  was  eloquent, 
master  of  all  arts,  and  above  all  of  the  magic  of  musical  improvisa- 
tion; loved  as  a  friend  and  sister,  and  at  the  same  time  revered  as  a 
god;  not  awful  and  remote  from  impeccability,  but  with  the  fault  of 
excess  of  indulgence.  She  estimated  that  she  composed  about  a 
thousand  sacred  books  or  songs  developing  phases  of  his  mundane 
existence.  In  each  of  these  he  became  incarnate  man  on  touching 
the  earth,  always  in  a  new  group  of  people  who  were  good,  yet  suffer- 
ing martyrdoms  from  the  wicked  known  only  by  the  effects  of  their 
malice.  In  this  ''gentle  hallucination"  she  could  lose  herself  in  the 
midst  of  friends  and  turn  to  her  hero  deity  for  comfort.  There  must 
be  not  only  sacred  books,  but  a  temple  and  ritual,  and  in  a  garden 
thicket,  which  no  eye  could  penetrate,  in  a  moss-carpeted  chamber 
she  built  an  altar  against  a  tree-trunk,  ornamented  with  a  wreath 
hung  over  it.  Instead  of  sacrificing,  which  seemed  barbaric,  she 
proceeded  to  restore  life  and  liberty  to  butterflies,  lizards,  green 
frogs,  and  birds,  which  she  put  in  a  box,  laid  on  the  altar,  and  ''after 
having  invoked  the  good  genius  of  liberty  and  protection,"  opened 
it.  In  these  mimic  rites  and  delicious  reveries  she  found  the  germs 
of  a  religion  that  fitted  her  heart.  From  the  instant,  however,  that 
a  boy  playmate  discovered  and  entered  this  sanctuary,  "Corambe 
ceased  to  dwell  in  it.  The  dryads  and  the  cherubim  deserted  it," 
and  it  seemed  unreal.  The  temple  was  destroyed  with  great  care, 
and  the  garlands  and  shells  were  buried  under  the  tree.  ^ 

1  Sheldon  (Institutional  Activities  of  American  Children;  American 
Journal  of  Psychology,  July,  1898,  vol.  9,  p.  434)  describes  a  faintly  anal- 
ogous case  of  a  girl  of  eleven,  who  organized  the  worship  of  Pallas  Athena 
on  two  flat  rocks,  in  a  deep  ravine  by  a  stream  where  a  young  sycamore 
grew  from  an  old  stump,  as  did  Pallas  from  the  head  of  her  father  Zeus. 
There  was  a  court  consisting  of  king,  queen,  and  subjects,  and  priests 
who  officiated  at  sacrifices.  The  king  and  queen  wore  goldenrod  upon 
their  heads  and  waded  in  streams  attended  by  their  subjects;  gathered 
flowers  for  Athena;  caught  crayfish  which  were  duly  smashed  upon  her 
altar.  "Sometimes  there  was  a  special  celebration,  when,  in  addition  to 
the  slaughtered  craj^sh  and  beautiful  flower  decorations,  and  pickles 
stolen  from  the  dinner-table,  there  would  be  an  elaborate  ceremony," 
which  because  of  its  uncanny  acts  was  intensely  disliked  by  the  people  at 
hand. 

161 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

Louisa  Alcott's  romantic  period  opened  at  fifteen, 
when  she  began  to  write  poetry,  keep  a  heart  journal, 
and  wander  by  moonlight,  and  wished  to  be  the  Bettine 
of  Emerson,  in  whose  library  she  foraged;  wrote  him 
letters  which  were  never  sent;  sat  in  a  tall  tree  at 
midnight ;  left  wild  flowers  on  the  doorstep  of  her  mas- 
ter; sang  Mignon's  song  under  his  window;  and  w^as 
refined  by  her  choice  of  an  idol.  Her  diary  w^as  all 
about  herself. 

If  she  looked  in  the  glass  at  her  long  hair  and  well-shaped  head, 
she  tried  to  keep  down  her  vanity;  her  quick  tongue,  moodiness,  pov- 
erty, impossible  longings,  made  every  day  a  battle  until  she  hardly 
wished  to  live,  only  something  must  be  done,  and  waiting  is  so  hard. 
She  imagined  her  mind  a  room  in  confusion  which  must  be  put  in 
order;  the  useless  thought  swept  out;  foolish  fancies  dusted  away; 
newly  furnished  with  good  resolutions.  But  she  was  not  a  good 
housekeeper;  cobwebs  got  in,  and  it  was  hard  to  rule.  She  was 
smitten  with  a  mania  for  the  stage,  and  spent  most  of  her  leisure  in 
writing  and  acting  plays  of  melodramatic  style  and  high-strung 
sentiment,  improbable  incidents,  with  no  touch  of  common  life  or 
sense  of  humor,  full  of  concealments  and  surprises,  bright  dialogues, 
and  lofty  sentiments.  She  had  much  dramatic  power  and  loved  to 
transform  herself  into  Hamlet  and  declaim  in  mock  heroic  style. 
From  sixteen  to  twenty-three  was  her  apprenticeship  to  life.  She 
taught,  wrote  for  the  papers,  did  housework  for  pay  as  a  servant, 
and  found  sewing  a  pleasant  resource  because  it  was  tranquillizing, 
left  her  free,  and  set  her  thoughts  going. 

Mrs.  Burnett,^  like  most  women  who  record  their  childhood  and 
adolescent  memories,  is  far  more  subjective  and  interesting  than  most 
men.  In  early  adolescence  she  was  never  alone  when  with  flowers, 
but  loved  to  "speak  to  them,  to  bend  down  and  say  caressing  things, 
to  stoop  and  kiss  them,  to  praise  them  for  their  pretty  ways  of  look- 
ing up  at  her  as  into  the  eyes  of  a  friend  and  beloved.  There  were 
certain  little  blue  violets  which  always  seemed  to  lift  their  small  faces 
childishly,  as  if  they  were  saying,  'Kiss  me;  don't  go  by  like  that.'" 
She  would  sit  on  the  po'-ch,  elbows  on  knees  and  chin  on  hands, 
staring  upward,  sometimes  lying  on  the  grass.     Heaven  was  so  high 

1  The  One  I  Know  the  Best  of  All.  A  Memory  of  the  Mind  of  a  Child. 
By  Frances  Hodgson  Burnett.     Scribner's  Sons,  New  York,  1893. 

162 


BIOGRAPHIES   OF  YOUTH 

and  yet  she  was  a  part  of  it  and  was  something  even  among  the  stars. 
It  was  a  weird,  updrawn,  overwhelming  feehng  as  she  stared  so 
fixedly  and  intently  that  the  earth  seemed  gone,  left  far  behind. 
Every  hour  and  moment  was  a  wonderful  and  beautiful  thing.  She 
felt  on  speaking  terms  with  the  rabbits.  Something  was  happening 
in  the  leaves  which  waved  and  rustled  as  she  passed.  Just  to  walk, 
sit,  lie  around  out  of  doors,  to  loiter,  gaze,  watch  with  a  heart  fresh 
as  a  young  dryad,  following  birds,  playing  hide-and-seek  with  the 
brook — these  were  her  halcyon  hours. 

With  the  instability  of  genius,  Beth*  did  everything  suddenly. 
When  twelve  or  thirteen,  she  had  grown  too  big  to  be  carried,  pulled 
or  pushed;  she  suddenly  stood  still  one  day,  when  her  mother  com- 
manded her  to  dress.  She  had  been  ruled  before  by  physical  force, 
but  her  will  and  that  of  her  mother  were  now  in  collision,  and  the 
latter  realized  she  could  make  her  do  nothing  unless  by  persuasion 
or  moral  influence.  Being  constantly  reproved,  scolded,  and  even 
beaten  by  her  mother,  Beth  one  day  impulsively  jumped  into  the  sea, 
and  was  rescued  with  difficulty.  She  had  spells  of  being  miserable 
with  no  cause.  She  was  well  and  happy,  but  would  burst  into  tears 
suddenly,  which  seemed  often  to  surprise  her.  Being  very  sensitive 
herself,  she  was  morbidly  careful  of  the  feelings  of  others  and  in- 
cessantly committed  grave  sins  of  insincerity  without  compunction 
in  her  effort  to  spare  them.  To  those  who  confided  in  her  abilities, 
praised  her,  and  thought  she  could  do  things,  her  nature  expanded, 
but  her  mother  checked  her  mental  growth  over  and  over,  instead 
of  helping  her  by  saying,  "  Don't  try,  you  can't  do  it,"  etc. 

Just  before  the  dawn  of  adolescence  she  had  passed  through  a  long 
period  of  abject  superstition,  largely  through  the  influence  of  a  serv- 
ant. All  the  old  woman's  signs  were  very  dominant  in  her  life.  She 
even  invented  methods  of  divination,  as,  "if  the  boards  do  not  creak 
when  I  walk  across  the  room  I  shall  get  through  my  lessons  without 
trouble."  She  always  preferred  to  see  two  rooks  together  to  one 
and  became  expert  in  the  black  arts.  She  used  to  hear  strange  noises 
at  night  for  a  time,  which  seemed  signs  and  portents  of  disaster  at  sea, 
fell  into  the  ways  of  her  neighbors,  and  had  more  faith  in  incantations 
than  in  doctors'  doses.  She  not  only  heard  voices  and  very  ingeni- 
ously described  them,  but  claimed  to  know  what  was  going  to  happen 
and  compared  her  forebodings  with  the  maid.  She  "got  religion" 
very  intensely  under  the  influence  of  her  aunt,  grew  thin,  lost  her 
appetite  and  sleep,  had  heartache  to  think  of  her  friends  burning  in 
hell,  and  tried  to  save  them. 

1  The  Beth  Book,  by  Sarah  Grand.  D.  Appleton  and  Co.,  New 
York,  1897. 

163 


YOUTH  :  ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

Beth  never  thought  at  all  of  her  personal  appearance  until  she 
overheard  a  gentleman  call  her  rather  nice-looking,  when  her  face 
flushed  and  she  had  a  new  feeling  of  surprise  and  pleasure,  and  took 
very  clever  ways  of  cross-examining  her  friends  to  find  if  she  was 
handsome.  All  of  a  sudden  the  care  of  her  person  became  of  great 
importance,  and  every  hint  she  had  heard  of  was  acted  on.  She  aired 
her  bed,  brushed  her  hair  glossy,  pinched  her  waist  and  feet,  washed 
in  buttermilk,  used  a  parasol,  tortured  her  natural  appetite  in  every 
w^ay,  put  on  gloves  to  do  dirty  work,  etc. 

The  house  always  irked  her.  Once  stealing  out  of  the  school  by 
night,  she  was  free,  stretched  herself,  drew  a  long  breath,  bounded 
and  waved  her  arms  in  an  ecstasy  of  liberty,  danced  around  the  mag- 
nolia, buried  her  face  in  the  big  flowers  one  after  another  and  bathed 
it  in  the  dew  of  the  petals,  visited  every  forbidden  place,  was  par- 
ticularly attracted  to  the  water,  enjoyed  scratching  and  making  her 
feet  bleed  and  eating  a  lot  of  green  fruit.  This  liberty  was  most 
precious  and  all  through  a  hot  summer  she  kept  herself  healthy  by 
exercise  in  the  moonlight.  This  revived  her  appetite,  and  she  ended 
these  night  excursions  by  a  forage  in  the  kitchen.  Beth  had  times 
when  she  hungered  for  solitude  and  for  nature.  Sometimes  she 
would  shut  herself  in  her  room,  but  more  often  would  rove  the  fields 
and  woods  in  ecstasy.  Coming  home  from  school,  where  she  had 
long  been,  she  had  to  greet  the  trees  and  fields  almost  before  she  did 
her  parents.  She  had  a  great  habit  of  stealing  out,  often  by  the  most 
dangerous  routes  over  roofs,  etc.,  at  night  in  the  moonlight,  running 
and  jumping,  waving  her  arms,  throwing  herself  on  the  ground,  roll- 
ing over,  walking  on  all-fours,  turning  somersaults,  hugging  trees, 
playing  hide-and-seek  with  the  shadow  fairy-folk,  now  playing  and 
feehng  fear  and  running  away.     She  invoked  trees,  stars,  etc. 

Beth's  first  love  affair  was  with  a  bright,  fair-haired,  fat-faced 
boy,  who  sat  near  her  pew  Sundays.  They  looked  at  each  other 
once  during  service,  and  she  felt  a  glad  glow  in  her  chest  spread  over 
her,  dwelt  on  his  image,  smiled,  and  even  the  next  day  felt  a  new 
desire  to  please.  She  watched  for  him  to  pass  from  school.  When 
he  appeared,  "had  a  most  delightful  thrill  shoot  through  her."  The 
first  impulse  to  fly  was  conquered ;  she  never  thought  a  boy  beautiful 
before.  They  often  met  after  dark,  wrote;  finally  she  grew  tired  of 
him  because  she  could  not  make  him  feel  deeply,  sent  him  off,  called 
him  an  idiot,  and  then  soliloquized  on  the  '*  most  dreadful  grief  of  her 
life."  The  latter  stages  of  their  acquaintance  she  occasionally  used 
to  beat  him,  but  his  attraction  steadily  waned.  Once  later,  as  she 
was  suffering  from  a  dull,  irresolute  feeling  due  to  want  of  a  com- 
panion and  an  object,  she  met  a  boy  of  seventeen,  whose  face,  like  her 

164 


BIOGRAPHIES  OF   YOUTH 

own,  brightened  as  they  approached.  It  was  the  first  appearance  of 
nature's  mandate  to  mate.  This  friendly  glance  sufTused  her  whole 
being  with  the  "glory  and  vision  of  love."  Religion  and  young  men 
were  her  need.  They  had  stolen  interviews  by  night  and  many  an 
innocent  embrace  and  kiss,  and  almost  died  once  by  being  caught. 
They  planned  in  detail  what  they  would  do  after  they  were  married, 
but  all  was  taken  for  granted  without  formal  vows.  Only  when  criti- 
cized did  they  ever  dream  of  caution  and  concealment,  and  then  they 
made  elaborate  parades  of  ignoring  each  other  in  public  and  fired  their 
imaginations  with  thoughts  of  disguises,  masks,  etc.  This  passion 
was  nipped  in  the  bud  by  the  boy's  removal  from  his  school. 

In  preparing  for  her  first  communion,  an  anonymous  writer  *  be- 
came sober  and  studious,  proposing  to  model  her  life  on  that  of  each 
fresh  saint  and  to  spend  a  week  in  retreat  examining  her  conscience 
with  a  vengeance.  She  wanted  to  revive  the  custom  of  public  con- 
fession and  wrote  letters  of  penitence  and  submission,  which  she  tore 
up  later,  finding  her  mind  not  "  all  of  a  piece."  She  lay  prostrate  on 
her  prie-dieu  weeping  from  ecstasy,  lying  on  the  rim  of  heaven  held 
by  angels,  wanting  to  die,  now  bathed  in  bliss  or  aching  intolerably 
with  spiritual  joy,  but  she  was  only  twelve  and  her  old  nature  often 
reasserted  itself.  Religion  at  that  time  became  an  intense  emotion 
nourished  on  incense,  music,  tapers,  and  a  feeling  of  being  tangible. 
It  was  rapturous  and  sensuous.  While  under  its  spell,  she  seemed 
to  float  and  touch  the  wings  of  angels.  Here  solemn  Gregorian  chants 
are  sung,  so  that  when  one  comes  back  to  earth  there  is  a  sense  of 
hunger,  deception,  and  self-loathing.  Now  she  came  to  understand 
how  so  many  sentimental  and  virtuous  souls  sought  oblivion  in  the 
narcotic  of  religious  excitement.  Here,  at  the  age  of  twelve,  youth 
began  and  childhood  ended  with  her  book. 

Pathetic  is  the  account  of  Helen  Keller 's  effort  to  un- 
derstand the  meaning  of  the  word  ' '  love  ' '  in  its  season.^ 

Is  it  the  sweetness  of  flowers?  she  asked.  No,  said  her  teacher. 
Is  it  the  warm  sun?  Not  exactly.  It  can  not  be  touched,  " '  but  you 
feel  the  sweetness  that  it  pours  into  everything.  Without  love,  you 
would  not  be  happy  or  want  to  play . '  The  beautiful  truth  burst  upon 
my  mind.     I  felt  that  there  were  invisible  lines  stretched  between  my 

1  Autobiography  of  a  Child.  Hannah  Lynch,  W.  Blackwood  and 
Sons,  London,  1899,  p.  255. 

2  The  Story  of  My  Life.  By  Helen  Keller.  Doubleday,  Page 
and  Co.,  New  York,  1903,  p.  30. 

165 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

spirit  and  the  spirit  of  others."  This  period  seems  to  have  come 
gradually  and  naturally  to  this  wonderful  child,  whose  life  has  been 
perhaps  the  purest  ever  lived  and  one  of  the  sweetest.  None  has 
ever  loved  every  aspect  of  nature  accessible  to  her  more  passion- 
ately, or  felt  more  keenly  the  charm  of  nature  or  of  beautiful  senti- 
ments. The  unhappy  Frost  King  episode  has  been  almost  the  only 
cloud  upon  her  life,  which  unfortunately  came  at  about  the  dawn  of 
this  period,  that  is  perhaps  better  marked  by  the  great  expansion  of 
mind  which  she  experienced  at  the  World's  Fair  in  Chicago  in  1893, 
when  she  was  thirteen.  About  this  time,  too,  her  great  ambition  of 
going  to  college  and  enjoying  all  the  advantages  that  other  girls  did, 
which,  considering  her  handicap,  was  one  of  the  greatest  human 
resolutions,  was  strengthened  and  deepened.  The  fresh,  spontane- 
ous, and  exquisite  reactions  of  this  pellucid  mind,  which  felt  that 
each  individual  could  comprehend  all  the  experiences  and  emotions 
of  the  race  and  that  chafed  at  every  pedagogical  and  technical  ob- 
stacle between  her  soul  and  nature,  and  the  great  monuments  of 
literature,  show  that  she  has  conserved  to  a  remarkable  degree, 
which  the  world  will  wish  may  be  permanent,  the  best  impulses  of 
this  golden  age. 

Marie  Bashkirtseff/  who  may  be  taken  as  one  of  the 
best  types  of  exaggerated  adolescent  confessionalists, 
was  rich  and  of  noble  birth,  and  began  in  1873,  at  the 
age  of  twelve,  to  write  a  journal  that  should  be  ab- 
solutely true  and  frank,  with  no  pretense,  affectation, 
or  concealment.  The  journal  continues  until  her  death, 
October,  1884,  at  the  age  of  twenty-three.  It  may  be 
described  as  in  some  sense  a  feminine  counterpart  of 
Rousseau's  confessions,  but  is  in  some  respects  a  more 
precious  psychological  document  than  any  other  for  the 
elucidation  of  the  adolescent  ferment  in  an  unusually 
vigorous  and  gifted  soul.  Twice  I  have  read  it  from 
cover  to  cover  and  with  growing  interest. 

At  twelve  she  is  passionately  in  love  with  a  duke,  whom  she  some- 
times saw  pass,  but  who  had  no  knowledge  of  her  existence,  and  builds 

1  Journal  of  a  Young  Artist.  Cassell  and  Co.,  New  York,  1889, 
p.  434. 

166 


BIOGRAPHIES  OF  YOUTH 

nany  air  castles  about  his  throwing  himself  at  her  feet  and  of  their 
ife  together.  She  prays  passionately  to  see  him  again,  would  dazzle 
lim  on  the  stage,  would  lead  a  perfect  life,  develop  her  voice,  and 
;vould  be  an  ideal  wife.  She  agonizes  before  the  glass  on  whether 
)r  not  she  is  pretty,  and  resolves  to  ask  some  young  man,  but  prefers 
:o  think  well  of  herself  even  if  it  is  an  illusion;  constantly  modulates 
)ver  into  passionate  prayer  to  God  to  grant  all  her  wishes;  is  op- 
jressed  with  despair;  gay  and  melancholy  by  turn;  believes  in  God 
because  she  prayed  Him  for  a  set  of  croquet  and  to  help  her  to  learn 
English,  both  of  which  He  granted.  At  church  some  prayers  and 
lervices  seem  directly  aimed  at  her;  Paris  now  seems  a  frightful 
lesert,  and  she  has  no  motive  to  avoid  carelessness  in  her  appearance, 
she  has  freaky  and  very  changeable  ideas  of  arranging  the  things 
n  her  room.  When  she  hears  of  the  duke's  marriage  she  almost 
hrows  herself  over  a  bridge,  prays  God  for  pardon  of  her  sins,  and 
hinks  all  is  ended;  finds  it  horrible  to  dissemble  her  feelings  in 
mblic;  goes  through  the  torture  of  altering  her  prayer  about  the 
luke.  She  is  disgusted  with  common  people,  harrowed  by  jealousy, 
:nvy,  deceit,  and  every  hideous  feeling,  yet  feels  herself  frozen  in 
he  depth,  and  moving  only  on  the  surface.  When  her  voice  im- 
)roves  she  welcomes  it  with  tears  and  feels  an  all-powerful  queen. 
?he  man  she  loves  should  never  speak  to  another.  Her  journal  she 
esolves  to  make  the  most  instructive  book  that  ever  was  or  ever  will 
>e  written.  She  esteems  herself  so  great  a  treasure  that  no  one  is 
rarthy  of  her;  pities  those  who  think  they  can  please  her;  thinks  her- 
elf  a  real  divinity;  prays  to  the  moon  to  show  her  in  dreams  her 
uture  husband,  and  quarrels  with  her  photographs. 

In  some  moods  she  feels  herself  beautiful,  knows  she  shall  succeed, 
verything  smiles  upon  her  and  she  is  absolutely  happy  and  yet  in  the 
text  paragraph  the  fever  of  life  at  high  pressure  palls  upon  her  and 
hings  seem  asleep  and  unreal.  Her  attempts  to  express  her  feelings 
irive  her  to  desperation  because  words  are  inadequate.  She  loves  to 
7eep,  gives  up  to  despair  to  think  of  death,  and  finds  everj'thing 
ranscendently  exquisite.  She  comes  to  despise  men  and  wonder 
i^hether  the  good  are  always  stupid  and  the  intelligent  always  false 
nd  saturated  with  baseness,  but  on  the  whole  believes  that  some 
ime  or  other  she  is  destined  to  meet  one  true  good  and  great  man. 
fow  she  is  inflated  with  pride  of  her  ancestry,  her  gifts,  and  would 
ubordinate  everybody  and  everything;  she  would  never  speak  a 
ommonplace  word,  and  then  again  feels  that  her  life  has  been  a 
ailure  and  she  is  destined  to  be  always  waiting.  She  falls  on  her 
nees  sobbing,  praying  to  God  Math  outstretched  hands  as  if  He  were 
;i  her  room;  almost  vows  to  make  a  pilgrimage  to  Jerusalem  one- 
12  167 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

tenth  of  the  way  on  foot;  to  devote  her  money  to  good  works;  lacks 
the  pleasures  proper  to  her  age;  wonders  if  she  can  ever  love  again. 
On  throwing  a  bouquet  from  a  window  into  a  crowd  in  the  Corso  a 
young  man  choked  so  beautifully  a  workman  who  caught  it  that  by 
that  one  act  of  strangling  and  snatching  the  bouciuet  she  fell  in  love. 
The  young  man  calls  and  they  see  each  other  often.  Now  she  is  clad 
from  head  to  foot  in  an  armor  of  cold  politeness,  now  vanity  and  now 
passion  seem  uppermost  in  their  meetings.  She  wonders  if  a  certain 
amount  of  sin,  like  air,  is  necessary  to  a  man  to  sustain  life.  Finally 
they  vow  mutual  love  and  Pietro  leaves,  and  she  begins  to  fear  that 
she  has  cherished  illusions  or  been  insulted;  is  tormented  at  things 
unsaid  or  of  her  spelling  in  French.  She  coughs  and  for  three  days 
has  a  new  idea  that  she  is  going  to  die;  prays  and  prostrates  herself 
sixty  times,  one  for  each  bead  in  her  rosary,  touching  the  floor  with 
her  forehead  every  time;  wonders  if  God  takes  intentions  into  ac- 
count; resolves  to  read  the  New  Testament,  but  can  not  find  one  and 
reads  Dumas  instead.  In  novel-reading  she  imagines  herself  the 
heroine  of  every  scene ;  sees  her  lover  and  they  plan  their  mode  of  life 
together  and  at  last  kiss  each  other,  but  later  she  feels  humiliated, 
chilled,  doubts  if  it  is  real  love;  studies  the  color  of  her  lips  to  see  if 
they  have  changed;  fears  that  she  has  compromised  herself;  has  eye 
symptoms  that  make  her  fear  blindness.  Once  on  reading  the 
Testament  she  smiled  and  clasped  her  hands,  gazed  upward,  was  no 
longer  herself  but  in  ecstasy;  she  makes  many  programs  for  life;  is 
haunted  by  the  phrase ''  We  live  but  once  " ;  wants  to  live  a  dozen  lives 
in  one,  but  feels  that  she  does  not  live  one-fourth  of  a  life;  has  several 
spells  of  solitary  illumination.  At  other  times  she  wishes  to  be  the 
center  of  a  salon  and  imagines  herself  to  be  so.  She  soars  on  poets' 
wings,  but  often  has  hell  in  her  heart ;  slowly  love  is  vowed  henceforth 
to  be  a  word  without  meaning  to  her.  Although  she  suffers  from 
ennui,  she  realizes  that  women  live  only  from  sixteen  to  forty  and 
cannot  bear  the  thought  of  losing  a  moment  of  her  life;  criticizes  her 
mother;  scorns  marriage  and  child-bearing,  which  any  washerwoman 
can  attain,  but  pants  for  glory;  now  hates,  now  longs  to  see  new 
faces;  thinks  of  disguising  herself  as  a  poor  girl  and  going  out  to 
seek  her  fortunes;  thinks  her  mad  vanity  is  her  devil;  that  her 
ambitions  are  justified  by  no  results;  hates  moderation  in  anything, 
would  have  intense  and  constant  excitement  or  absolute  repose;  at 
fifteen  abandons  her  idea  of  the  duke  but  wants  an  idol,  and  finally 
decides  to  live  for  fame;  studies  her  shoulders,  hips,  bust,  to  gauge 
her  success  in  life;  tries  target-shooting,  hits  every  time  and  feels 
it  to  be  fateful;  at  times  despises  her  mother  because  she  is  so  easily 
influenced  by  her;  meets  another  man  whose  affection  for  her  she 

168 


BIOGRAPHIES   OF  YOUTH 

thinks  might  be  as  reverent  as  religion  and  who  never  profaned  the 
purity  of  his  hfe  by  a  thought,  but  finally  drops  him  because  the  possi- 
ble disappointment  would  be  unbearable;  finds  that  the  more  un- 
happy any  one  is  for  love  of  us  the  happier  we  are ;  wonders  why  she 
has  weeping  spells ;  wonders  what  love  that  people  talk  so  much  about 
really  is,  and  whether  she  is  ever  to  know.  One  night,  at  the  age  of 
seventeen,  she  has  a  fit  of  despair,  which  vents  itself  in  moans  until 
arising,  she  seizes  the  dining-room  clock,  rushes  out  and  throws  it 
into  the  sea,  when  she  becomes  happy.     "Poor  clock!" 

At  another  time  she  fears  she  has  used  the  word  love  lightly  and 
resolves  to  no  longer  invoke  God's  help,  yet  in  the  next  line  prays 
Him  to  let  her  die  as  everything  is  against  her,  her  thoughts  are  inco- 
herent, she  hates  herself  and  everything  is  contemptible;  but  she 
wishes  to  die  peacefully  while  some  one  is  singing  a  beautiful  air  of 
Verdi.  Again  she  thinks  of  shaving  her  head  to  save  the  trouble  of 
arranging  her  hair;  is  crazed  to  think  that  every  moment  brings  her 
nearer  death;  to  waste  a  moment  of  life  is  infamous,  yet  she  can 
trust  no  one;  all  the  freshness  of  life  is  gone;  few  things  affect  her 
now;  she  wonders  how  in  the  past  she  could  have  acted  so  foolishly 
and  reasoned  so  wisely;  is  proud  that  no  advice  in  the  world  could 
ever  keep  her  from  doing  anything  she  wished.  She  thinks  the 
journal  of  her  former  years  exaggerated  and  resolves  to  be  moderate; 
wants  to  make  others  feel  as  she  feels;  finds  that  the  only  cure  for 
disenchantment  with  life  is  devotion  to  work;  fears  her  face  is  wear- 
ing an  anxious  look  instead  of  the  confident  expression  which  was  its 
chief  charm.  "  Impossible  "  is  a  hideous,  maddening  word;  to  think 
of  dying  like  a  dog  as  most  people  do  and  leaving  nothing  behind  is 
a  granite  wall  against  which  she  every  instant  dashes  her  head.  If 
she  loved  a  man,  every  expression  of  admiration  for  anything  or  any- 
body else  in  her  presence  would  be  a  profanation.  Now  she  thinks 
the  man  she  loves  must  never  know  what  it  is  to  be  in  want  of  money 
and  must  purchase  everything  he  wishes ;  must  weep  to  see  a  woman 
want  for  anything,  and  find  the  door  of  no  palace  or  club  barred  to 
him.  Art  becomes  a  great  shining  light  in  her  life  of  few  pleasures 
and  many  griefs,  yet  she  dares  hope  for  nothing. 

At  eighteen  all  her  caprices  are  exhausted ;  she  vows  and  prays  in 
the  name  of  the  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost  for  her  wishes.  She 
would  like  to  be  a  millionaire,  get  back  her  voice,  obtain  the  prix 
de  Rome  under  the  guise  of  a  man  and  marry  Napoleon  IV.  On 
winning  a  medal  for  her  pictures  she  does  nothing  but  laugh,  cry, 
and  dream  of  greatness,  but  the  next  day  is  scolded  and  grows  dis- 
couraged. She  has  an  immense  sense  of  growth  and  transformation, 
so  that  not  a  trace  of  her  old  nature  remains ;  feels  that  she  has  far  too 

169 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

much  of  some  things,  and  far  too  httle  of  others  in  her  nature;  sees 
defects  in  her  mother's  character,  whose  pertinacity  is  hke  a  disease; 
reahzes  that  one  of  her  chief  passions  is  to  inspire  rather  than  to  feel 
love;  that  her  temper  is  profoundly  affected  by  her  dress;  deplores 
that  her  family  expect  her  to  achieve  greatness  rather  than  give  her 
the  stimulus  of  expecting  nothing;  declares  that  she  thinks  a  million 
thoughts  for  every  word  that  she  writes ;  is  disgusted  with  and  some- 
times absolutely  hates  herself.  At  one  time  she  coquets  with  Kant, 
and  wonders  if  he  is  right  that  all  things  exist  only  in  the  imagina- 
tion; has  a  passion  for  such  " abracadabrante  follies"  that  seem  so 
learned  and  logical,  but  is  grieved  to  feel  them  to  be  false;  longs  to 
penetrate  the  intellectual  world,  to  see,  learn,  and  know  everything; 
admires  Balzac  because  he  describes  so  frankly  all  that  he  has  felt; 
loves  Fleury,  who  has  shown  her  a  wider  horizon;  still  has  spells  of 
admiring  her  dazzling  complexion  and  deploring  that  she  can  not  go 
out  alone;  feels  that  she  is  losing  her  grip  on  art  and  also  on  God, 
who  no  longer  hears  her  prayers,  and  resolves  to  kill  herself  if  she  is 
not  famous  at  thirty. 

At  nineteen,  and  even  before,  she  has  spells  of  feeling  inefficient, 
cries,  calls  on  God,  feels  exhausted;  is  almost  stunned  when  she  hears 
that  the  young  French  prince  about  whom  she  has  spun  romances 
was  killed  by  the  Kaffirs ;  feels  herself  growing  serious  and  sensible ; 
despises  death;  realizes  that  God  is  not  what  she  thought,  but  is 
perhaps  Nature  and  Life  or  is  perhaps  Chance;  she  thinks  out  possible 
pictures  she  might  paint;  develops  a  Platonic  friendship  for  her 
professor;  might  marry  an  old  man  with  twenty-seven  millions,  but 
spurns  the  thought;  finds  herself  growing  deaf  gradually,  and  at 
nineteen  finds  three  gray  hairs;  has  awful  remorse  for  days,  when  she 
cannot  work  and  so  loses  herself  in  novels  and  cigarettes;  makes 
many  good  resolutions  and  then  commits  some  folly  as  if  in  a  dream ; 
has  spells  of  reviewing  the  past.  When  the  doctor  finds  a  serious 
lung  trouble  and  commands  iodine,  cod-liver  oil,  hot  milk,  and 
flannel,  she  at  first  scorns  death  and  refuses  all,  and  is  delighted  at 
the  terror  of  her  friends,  but  gradually  does  all  that  is  necessary ;  feels 
herself  too  precocious  and  doomed;  deplores  especially  that  con- 
sumption will  cost  her  her  good  looks;  has  fits  of  intense  anger 
alternating  with  tears;  concludes  that  death  is  annihilation;  realizes 
the  horrible  thought  that  she  has  a  skeleton  within  her  that  some 
time  or  other  will  come  out;  reads  the  New  Testament  again  and  re- 
turns to  belief  in  miracles  and  prayer  to  Jesus  and  the  Virgin;  dis- 
tributes one  thousand  francs  to  the  poor;  records  the  dreamy 
delusions  that  flow  through  her  brain  at  night  and  the  strange  sensa- 
tions by  day.     Her  eye  symptoms  cause  her  to  fear  blindness  again; 

170 


BIOGRAPHIES   OF   YOUTH 

she  grows  superstitious,  believing  in  signs  and  fortune-tellers ;  is 
strongly  impelled  to  embrace  and  make  up  with  her  mother;  at  times 
defies  God  and  death;  sees  a  Spanish  bull-fight  and  gets  from  it  a 
general  impression  of  human  cowardice,  but  has  a  strange  intoxica- 
tion with  blood  and  would  like  to  thrust  a  lance  into  the  neck  of  every- 
one she  meets;  coquets  a  great  deal  with  the  thought  of  marriage; 
takes  up  her  art  and  paints  a  few  very  successful  pictures;  tries  to 
grapple  with  the  terrible  question,  "What  is  my  unbiased  opinion 
concerning  myself?"  pants  chiefly  for  fame.  When  the  other  lung 
is  found  diseased  the  diary  becomes  sometimes  more  serious,  some- 
times more  fevered;  she  is  almost  racked  to  find  some  end  in  life; 
shall  she  marry,  or  paint?  and  at  last  finds  much  consolation  in  the 
visits  of  Bastien-Lepage,  who  comes  to  see  her  often  while  he  is 
dying  of  some  gastric  trouble.  She  keeps  up  occasional  and  often 
daily  entries  in  her  journal  until  eleven  days  before  her  death, 
occurring  in  October,  1884,  at  the  age  of  twenty-three,  and  precipi- 
tated by  a  cold  incurred  while  making  an  open-air  sketch. 

The  confessional  outpourings  of  Mary  ]\IacLane  ^ 
constitute  a  unique  and  valuable  adolescent  document, 
despite  the  fact  that  it  seems  throughout  affected  and 
written  for  effect;  however,  it  well  illustrates  a  real 
type,  although  perhaps  hardly  possible  save  in  this  coun- 
try, and  was  inspired  very  likely  by  the  preceding. 

She  announces  at  the  outset  that  she  is  odd,  a  genius,  an  extreme 
egotist;  has  no  conscience;  despises  her  father,  "Jim  MacLane  of 
selfish  memory";  loves  scrubbing  the  floor  because  it  gives  her 
strength  and  grace  of  body,  although  her  daily  life  is  an  "empty 
damned  weariness."  She  is  a  female  Napoleon  passionately  desiring 
fame;  is  both  a  philosopher  and  a  coward;  her  heart  is  wooden; 
although  but  nineteen,  she  feels  forty;  desires  happiness  even  more 
than  fame,  for  an  hour  of  which  she  would  give  up  at  once  fame, 
money,  power,  virtue,  honor,  truth,  and  genius  to  the  devil,  whose 
coming  she  awaits.  She  discusses  her  portrait,  which  constitutes  the 
frontispiece;  is  glad  of  her  good  strong  body,  and  still  awaits  in  a 
wild,  frenzied  impatience  the  coming  of  the  devil  to  take  her  sacrifice, 
and  to  whom  she  would  dedicate  her  life.     She  loves  but  one  in  all 

1  The  Story  of  Mary  MacLane.  By  herself.  Herbert  S.  Stone 
and  Ck).,  Chicago,  1902,  p.  322. 

171 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

the  world,  an  older  ''anemone"  lady,  once  her  teacher.  She  can 
not  distinguish  between  right  and  wrong;  love  is  the  only  thing  real 
which  will  some  day  bring  joy,  but  it  is  agony  to  wait.  "Oh, 
damn!  damn!  damn!  damn!  every  living  thing  in  the  world! — the 
universe  be  damned! "  herself  included.  She  is  " marvelously  deep," 
but  thanks  the  good  devil  who  has  made  her  without  conscience  and 
virtue  so  that  she  may  take  her  happiness  when  it  comes.  Her  soul 
seeks  but  blindly,  for  nothing  answers.  How  her  happiness  will 
seethe,  quiver,  writhe,  shine,  dance,  rush,  surge,  rage,  blare,  and 
wreak  with  love  and  light  when  it  comes! 

The  devil  she  thinks  fascinating  and  strong,  with  a  will  of  steel, 
in  conventional  clothes,  whom  she  periodically  falls  in  love  with  and 
would  marry,  and  would  love  to  be  tortured  by  him.  She  holds  im- 
aginary conversations  with  him.  If  happiness  does  not  come  soon 
.  she  will  commit  suicide,  and  she  finds  rapture  in  the  thought  of  death. 
In  Butte,  Montana,  where  she  lives,  she  wanders  among  the  box 
rustlers,  the  beer  jerkers,  biscuit  shooters,  and  plunges  out  into  the 
sand  and  barrenness,  but  finds  everything  dumb.  The  six  tooth- 
brushes in  the  bathroom  make  her  wild  and  profane.  She  flirts 
with  death  at  the  top  of  a  dark,  deep  pit,  and  thinks  out  the  stages  of 
decomposition  if  she  yielded  herself  to  Death,  who  would  dearly 
love  to  have  her.  She  confesses  herself  a  thief  on  several  occasions, 
but  comforts  herself  because  the  stolen  money  was  given  to  the  poor. 
Sometimes  her  "very  good  legs"  carry  her  out  into  the  country, 
where  she  has  imaginary  love  confabs  with  the  devil,  but  the  world 
is  so  empty,  dreary,  and  cold,  and  it  is  all  so  hard  to  bear  when  one  is 
a  woman  and  nineteen.  She  has  a  litany  from  which  she  prays  in 
recurrent  phrases  "Kind  devil,  deliver  me" — as,  e.  g.,  from  musk, 
boys  with  curls,  feminine  men,  wobbly  hips,  red  note-paper,  codfish- 
balls,  lisle-thread  stockings,  the  books  of  A.  C.  Gunter  and  Albert 
Ross,  wax  flowers,  soft  old  bachelors  and  widowers,  nice  young  men,  tin 
spoons,  false  teeth,  thin  shoes,  etc.  She  does  not  seem  real  to  herself, 
everything  is  a  blank.  Though  she  doubts  everything  else,  she  will 
keep  the  one  atom  of  faith  in  love  and  the  truth  that  is  love  and  life 
in  her  heart.  When  something  shrieks  within  her,  she  feels  that  all 
her  anguish  is  for  nothing  and  that  she  is  a  fool.  She  is  exasperated 
that  people  call  her  peculiar,  but  confesses  that  she  loves  admiration ; 
she  can  fascinate  and  charm  company  if  she  tries;  imagines  an  ad- 
miration for  Mcssalina.  She  most  desires  to  cultivate  badness  when 
there  is  lead  in  the  sky.  "  I  would  live  about  seven  years  of  judicious 
badness,  and  then  death  if  you  will."  "I  long  to  cultivate  the 
element  of  badness  in  me."  She  describes  the  fascination  of  making 
and  eating  fudge;  devotes  a  chapter  to  describing  how  to  eat  an  olive; 

172 


BIOGRAPHIES   OF   YOUTH 

discusses  her  figure.  "In  the  front  of  my  shirt-waist  there  are  nine 
cambric  handkerchiefs  cunningly  distributed."  She  discusses  her 
foot,  her  beautiful  hair,  her  hips ;  describes  each  of  the  seventeen  Uttle 
engraved  portraits  of  Napoleon  that  she  keeps,  with  each  of  which 
she  falls  in  love ;  vows  she  would  give  up  even  her  marvelous  genius 
for  one  dear,  bright  day  free  from  loneliness.  When  her  skirts  need 
sewing,  she  simply  pins  them ;  this  lasts  longer,  and  had  she  mended 
them  with  needle  and  thread  she  would  have  been  sensible,  which 
she  hates.  As  she  walks  over  the  sand  one  day  she  vows  that  she 
would  like  a  man  to  come  so  be  that  he  was  strong  and  a  perfect 
villain,  and  she  would  pray  him  to  lead  her  to  what  the  world  calls 
her  ruin.  Nothing  is  of  consequence  to  her  except  to  be  rid  of  unrest 
and  pain.  She  would  be  positively  and  not  merely  negatively 
wicked.  To  poison  her  soul  would  rouse  her  mental  power.  "Oh, 
to  know  just  once  what  it  is  to  be  loved!"  "I  know  that  I  am  a 
genius  more  than  any  genius  that  has  lived,"  yet  she  often  thinks 
herself  a  small  vile  creature  for  whom  no  one  cares.  The  world  is  in- 
effably dull,  heaven  has  always  fooled  her,  and  she  is  starving  for  love. 

Ada  Negri  illustrates  the  other  extreme  of  genuineness  and  is 
desperately  in  earnest.^  She  began  to  teach  school  in  a  squalid, 
dismal  Italian  village,  and  at  eighteen  to  write  the  poetry  that  has 
made  her  famous.  She  lived  in  a  dim  room  back  of  a  stable,  up  two 
flights,  where  the  windows  were  not  glass  but  paper,  and  where  she 
seems  to  have  been,  like  her  mother,  a  mill  hand  before  she  was  a 
teacher.  She  had  never  seen  a  theater,  but  had  read  of  Duse  with 
enthusiasm;  had  never  seen  the  sea,  mountains,  or  even  a  hill,  lake, 
or  large  city,  but  she  had  read  of  them.  After  she  began  to  write, 
friends  gave  her  two  dream  days  in  the  city.  Then  she  returned, 
put  on  her  wooden  shoes,  and  began  to  teach  her  eighty  children  to 
spell.     The  poetry  she  writes  is  from  the  heart  of  her  own  experience. 

She  craved  "the  kiss  of  genius  and  of  light,"  but  the  awful  figure 
of  misfortune  with  its  dagger  stood  by  her  bed  at  night.      She  writes : 

"  I  have  no  name — my  home  a  hovel  damp; 
I  grew  up  from  the  mire ; 
Wretched  and  outcast  folk  my  family, 
And  yet  within  me  burns  a  flame  of  fire." 

There  is  always  a  praying  angel  and  an  evil  dwarf  on  either  side. 
The  black  abyss  attracts  her,  yet  she  is  softened  by  a  child's  caress. 

1  Fate.  Translated  from  the  Italian  by  A.  M.  Von  Blomberg.  Cope- 
land  and  Day,  Boston,  1898. 

173 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

she  laughs  at  the  blackest  calamities  that  threaten  her,  but  weeps  over 
thin,  wan  children  without  bread.  Her  whole  life  goes  into  song. 
The  boy  criminal  on  the  street  fascinates  her  and  she  would  kiss  him. 
She  writes  of  jealousy  as  a  ghost  of  vengeance.  If  death  comes,  she 
fears  "that  the  haggard  doctor  will  dissect  my  naked  corpse,"  and 
pictures  herself  dying  on  the  operating-table  like  a  stray  dog,  and  her 
well-made  body  "  disgraced  by  the  lustful  kiss  of  the  too  eager  blade  " 
as,  "with  sinister  smile  untiring,  they  tear  my  bowels  out  and  still 
gloat  over  my  sold  corpse,  go  on  to  bare  my  bones  and  veins  at  will, 
wrench  out  my  heart,"  probe  vainly  for  the  secrets  of  hunger  and  the 
mystery  of  pain,  until  from  her  "dead  breast  gurgles  a  gasp  of  male- 
diction." Much  of  her  verse  is  imprecation.  "A  crimson  rain  of 
crying  blood  dripping  from  riddled  chests"  of  those  slain  for  liberty 
falls  on  her  heart;  the  sultry  factories  where  "monsters  of  steel,  huge 
engines,  snort  all  day,"  and  where  the  pungent  air  poisons  the  blood 
of  the  pale  weaver  girls;  the  fate  of  the  mason  who  fell  from  a  high 
roof  and  struck  the  stone  flagging,  whose  funeral  she  attends,  all  in- 
spire her  to  sing  occasionally  the  songs  of  enfranchised  labor.  Misery 
as  a  drear,  toothless  ghost  visits  her,  as  when  gloomy  pinions  had 
overspread  her  dying  mother's  bed,  to  wrench  with  sharp  nails  all  the 
hope  from  her  breast  with  which  she  had  defied  it.  A  wretched  old 
man  on  the  street  inspires  her  to  sing  of  what  she  imagines  is  his 
happy  though  humble  prime.  There  is  the  song  of  the  pickaxe 
brandished  in  revolution  when  mobs  cry  "Peace,  labor,  bread,"  and 
in  mines  of  industry  beneath  the  earth.  She  loves  the  "defeated" 
in  whose  house  no  fire  glows,  who  live  in  caves  and  dens,  and  writes 
of  the  mutilation  of  a  woman  in  the  factory  machinery.  At  eighteen 
years  "a  loom,  two  handsome  eyes  that  know  no  tears,  a  cotton  dress, 
a  love,  belong  to  me."  She  is  inspired  by  a  master  of  the  forge  beat- 
ing a  red-hot  bar,  with  his  bare  neck  swelled.  He  is  her  demon,  her 
God,  and  her  pride  in  him  is  ecstasy.  She  describes  jealousy  of  two 
rival  women,  so  intense  that  they  fight  and  bite,  and  the  pure  joy  of 
a  guileless,  intoxicating,  life-begetting  first  kiss.  She  longs  for  in- 
finite stretches  of  hot,  golden  sand,  over  which  she  would  gallop 
wildly  on  her  steed;  anticipates  an  old  age  of  cap  and  spectacles; 
revels  in  the  hurricane,  and  would  rise  in  and  fly  and  whirl  with  it 
adrift  far  out  in  the  immensity  of  space.  She  tells  us,  "Of  genius  and 
light  I'm  a  blithe  millionaire,"  and  elsewhere  she  longs  for  the  ever- 
lasting ice  of  lofty  mountains,  the  immortal  silence  of  the  Alps;  sings 
of  her  "sad  twenty  years,"  "how  all,  all  goes  when  love  is  gone  and 
spent."  She  imagines  herself  springing  into  the  water  which  closes 
over  her,  while  her  naked  soul,  ghostly  pale,  whirls  past  through  the 
lonely  dale.     She  imprecates  the  licentious  world  of  crafty  burghers, 

174 


BIOGRAPHIES   OF  YOUTH 

coquettes,  gamblers,  well-fed  millionaires,  cursed  geese  and  serpents 
that  make  the  cowardly  vile  world,  and  whom  she  would  smite  in  the 
face  with  her  indignant  verse.  ''Thou  crawlest  and  I  soar."  She 
chants  the  champions  of  the  spade,  hammer,  pick,  though  they  are 
ground  and  bowed  with  toil,  disfigured  within,  with  furrowed  brows. 
She  pants  for  war  with  outrage  and  with  wrong;  questions  the  abyss 
for  its  secret;  hears  moans  and  flying  shudders;  and  sees  phantoms 
springing  from  putrid  tombs.  The  full  moon  is  an  old  malicious  spy, 
peeping  stealthily  with  evil  eye.  She  is  a  bird  caught  in  a  cursed 
cage,  and  prays  some  one  to  unlock  the  door  and  give  her  space  and 
light,  and  let  her  soar  away  in  ecstasy  and  glory.  Nothing  less  than 
infinite  space  will  satisfy  her.  Even  the  tempest,  the  demon,  or  a 
malevolent  spirit  might  bear  her  away  on  unbridled  wings.  In  one 
poem  she  apostrophizes  Marie  Bashkirtseff  as  warring  with  vast 
genius  against  unknown  powers,  but  who  now  is  in  her  coffin  among 
worms,  her  skull  grinning  and  showing  its  teeth.  She  would  be 
possessed  by  her  and  thrilled  as  by  an  electric  current.  A  dwarf 
beggar  wrings  her  heart  with  pity,  but  she  will  not  be  overwhelmed. 
Though  a  daring  peasant,  she  will  be  free  and  sing  out  her  pa?an  to  the 
sun,  though  amid  the  infernal  glow  of  furnaces,  forges,  and  the  ring- 
ing noise  of  hammers  and  wheels. 

Literary  men  who  record  their  experiences  during 
this  stage  seem  to  differ  from  women  in  several  impor- 
tant respects.  First,  they  write  with  less  abandon.  I 
can  recall  no  male  MacLanes.  A  Bashkirtseff  would  be 
less  impossible,  and  a  Negri  with  social  reform  in  her 
heart  is  still  less  so.  But  men  are  more  prone  to  char- 
acterize their  public  metamorphoses  later  in  life,  when 
they  are  a  little  paled,  and  perhaps  feel  less  need  of 
confessionalism  for  that  reason.  It  would,  however,  be 
too  hazardous  to  elaborate  this  distinction  too  far.  Sec- 
ondly and  more  clearly,  men  tend  to  vent  their  ephebic 
calentures  more  in  the  field  of  action.  They  would 
break  the  old  moorings  of  home  and  strike  out  new 
careers,  or  vent  their  souls  in  efforts  and  dreams  of 
reconstructing  the  political,  industrial,  or  social  world. 
Their  impracticabilities  are  more  often  in  the  field 
of  practical  life  and  remoter  from  their  own  immediate 

175 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

surroundings.  This  is  especially  true  in  our  practical 
country,  which  so  far  lacks  subjective  characterizations 
of  this  age  of  eminent  literary  merit,  peculiarly  intense 
as  it  is  here.  Thirdly,  they  erupt  in  a  greater  variety  of 
ways,  and  the  many  kinds  of  genius  and  talent  that  now 
often  take  possession  of  their  lives  like  fate  are  more 
varied  and  individual.  This  affords  many  extreme  con- 
trasts, as,  e.  g.,  between  Trollope's  pity  for,  and  Goethe's 
apotheosis  of  his  youth;  Mill's  loss  of  feeling,  and  Jef- 
feries's  unanalytic,  passionate  outbursts  of  sentiment; 
the  esthetic  ritualism  of  Symonds,  and  the  progressive 
religious  emancipation  of  Fielding  Hall;  the  moral  and 
religious  supersensitiveness  of  Oliphant,  who  was  a  rein- 
carnation of  medieval  monkhood,  and  the  riotous 
storminess  of  Miiller  and  Ebers;  the  abnormalities  and 
precocity  of  De  Quincey,  and  the  steady,  healthful 
growth  of  Patterson;  the  simultaneity  of  a  fleshly  and 
spiritual  love  in  Keller  and  Goethe,  and  the  duality  of 
Pater,  with  his  great  and  tyrannical  intensification  of 
sensation  for  nature  and  the  sequent  mysticity  and 
symbolism.  In  some  it  is  fulminating  but  episodic,  in 
others  gradual  and  lifelong  like  the  advent  of  eternal 
spring.  Fourth,  in  their  subjective  states  women  out- 
grow less  in  their  consciousness,  and  men  depart  farther 
from  their  youth,  in  more  manifold  ways.  Lastly,  in 
its  religious  aspects,  the  male  struggles  more  with  dogma, 
and  his  enfranchisement  from  it  is  more  intellectually 
belabored.  Yet,  despite  all  these  differences,  the  anal- 
ogies between  the  sexes  are  probably  yet  more  numerous, 
more  all-pervasive.  All  these  biographic  facts  reveal 
nothing  not  found  in  questionnaire  returns  from  more 
ordinary  youth,  so  that  for  our  purposes  they  are  only 
the  latter,  writ  large  because  superior  minds  only  utter 
what  all  more  inwardly  feel.     The  arrangement  by  na- 

176 


BIOGRAPHIES   OF   YOUTH 

tionality  which  follows  gives  no  yet  adequate  basis  for 
inference  unless  it  be  the  above  American  peculiarity. 
In  his  autobiography  from  1785-1803,  De  Quincey  ^ 
remembered  feeling  that  life  was  finished  and  blighted 
for  him  at  the  age  of  six,  up  to  which  time  the  influence 
of  his  sister  three  years  older  had  brooded  over  him. 

His  first  remembrance,  however,  is  of  a  dream  of  terrific  grandeur 
before  he  was  two,  which  seemed  to  indicate  that  his  dream  tend- 
encies were  constitutional  and  not  due  to  morphine,  but  the  chill  was 
upon  the  first  glimpse  that  this  was  a  world  of  evil.  He  had  been 
brought  up  in  great  seclusion  from  all  knowledge  of  poverty  and  op- 
pression in  a  silent  garden  with  three  sisters,  but  the  rumor  that  a 
female  servant  had  treated  one  of  them  rudely  just  before  her  death 
plunged  him  into  early  pessimism.  He  felt  that  little  Jane  would 
come  back  certainly  in  the  spring  with  the  roses,  and  he  was  glad  that 
his  utter  miseiy  with  the  blank  anarchy  and  confusion  which  her 
death  brought  could  not  be  completely  remembered.  He  stole  into 
the  chamber  where  her  corpse  lay,  and  as  he  stood,  a  solemn  wind,  the 
saddest  he  ever  heard,  that  might  have  swept  the  fields  of  mortality 
for  a  thousand  centuries,  blew,  and  that  same  hollow  Memnonian  wind 
he  often  had  heard  since,  and  it  brought  back  the  open  summer  window 
and  the  corpse.  A  vault  above  opened  into  the  sky,  and  he  slept  and 
dreamed  there,  standing  by  her,  he  knew  not  how  long;  a  worm  that 
could  not  die  was  at  his  heart,  for  this  was  the  holy  love  between 
children  that  could  not  perish.  The  funeral  was  full  of  darkness  and 
despair  for  him,  and  after  it  he  sought  solitude,  gazed  into  the 
heavens  to  see  his  sister  till  he  was  tired,  and  realized  that  he  was 
alone.  Thus,  before  the  end  of  his  sixth  year,  with  a  mind  already 
adolescent,  although  with  a  retarded  body,  the  minor  tone  of  life 
became  dominant  and  his  awakening  to  it  was  hard. 

As  a  penniless  schoolboy  wandering  the  streets  of  London  at  night, 
he  was  on  familiar  and  friendly  terms  of  innocent  relationship  with 
a  number  of  outcast  women.  In  his  misery  they  were  to  him  simply 
sisters  in  calamity,  but  he  found  in  them  humanity,  disinterested  gen- 
erosity, courage,  and  fidelity.  One  night,  after  he  had  walked  the 
streets  for  weeks  with  one  of  these  friendless  girls  who  had  not  com- 
pleted her  sixteenth  year,  as  they  sat  on  the  steps  of  a  house,  he  grew 

1  Confessions  of  an  Opium  Eater.  Part  I.  Introductory  Narrative. 
(Cambridge  Classics)  1896. 

177 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

very  ill,  and  had  she  not  rushed  to  buy  from  her  slender  purse  cordials 
and  tenderly  ministered  to  and  revived  him,  he  would  have  died. 
Many  years  later  he  used  to  wander  past  this  house,  and  he  recalled 
with  real  tenderness  this  youthful  friendship;  he  longed  again  to 
meet  the  "noble-minded  Ann "  with  whom  he  had  so  often  con- 
versed famiharly  "more  Socratico,"  whose  betrayer  he  had  vainly 
sought  to  punish,  and  yearned  to  hear  from  her  in  order  to  convey  to 
her  some  authentic  message  of  gratitude,  peace,  and  forgiveness. 

His  much  older  brother  came  home  in  his  thirty-ninth  year  to  die. 
He  had  been  unmanageable  in  youth  and  his  genius  for  mischief  was 
an  inspiration,  yet  he  was  hostile  to  everything  pusillanimous, 
haughty,  aspiring,  ready  to  fasten  a  quarrel  on  his  shadow  for  run- 
ning before,  at  first  inclined  to  reduce  his  boy  brother  to  a  fag,  but 
finally  before  his  death  became  a  great  influence  in  his  life.  Prom- 
inent were  the  fights  between  De  Quincey  and  another  older  brother 
on  the  one  hand,  and  the  factory  crowd  of  boys  on  the  other,  a  fight 
incessantly  renewed  at  the  close  of  factory  hours,  with  victory  now 
on  one  and  now  on  the  other  side;  fought  with  stones  and  sticks, 
where  thrice  he  was  taken  prisoner,  where  once  one  of  the  factory 
women  kissed  him,  to  the  great  delight  of  his  heart.  He  finally  in- 
vented a  kingdom  like  Hartley  Coleridge,  called  Gom  Broon.  He 
thought  first  that  it  had  no  location,  but  finally  because  his  brother's 
imaginary  realm  was  north  and  he  wanted  wide  waters  between  them, 
his  was  in  the  far  south.  It  was  only  two  hundred  and  seventy  miles 
in  circuit,  and  he  was  stunned  to  be  told  by  his  brother  one  day  that 
his  own  domain  swept  south  for  eighty  degrees,  so  that  the  distance 
he  had  relied  on  vanished.  Here,  however,  he  continued  to  rule  for 
Avell  or  ill,  raising  taxes,  keeping  an  imaginary  standing  army,  fishing 
herring  and  selling  the  product  of  his  fishery  for  manure,  and  ex- 
periencing how  ''uneasy  lies  the  head  that  wears  a  crown."  He 
worried  over  his  obligations  to  Gom  Broon,  and  the  shadow  froze 
into  reality,  and  although  his  brother's  kingdom  Tigrosylvania  was 
larger,  his  was  distinguished  for  eminent  men  and  a  history  not  to  be 
ashamed  of.  A  friend  had  read  Lord  Monboddo's  view  that  men  had 
sprung  from  apes,  and  suggested  that  the  inhabitants  of  Gom  Broon 
had  tails,  so  that  the  brother  told  him  that  his  subjects  had  not 
emerged  from  apedom  and  he  must  invent  arts  to  eliminate  the  tails. 
They  must  be  made  to  sit  down  for  six  hours  a  day  as  a  beginning. 
Abdicate  he  would  not,  though  all  his  subjects  had  three  tails  apiece. 
They  had  suffered  together.  Vain  was  his  brother's  suggestion  that 
they  have  a  Roman  toga  to  conceal  their  ignominious  appendages. 
He  was  greatly  interested  in  two  scrofulous  idiots,  who  finally  died, 
and  feared  that  his  subjects  were  akin  to  them. 

178 


BIOGRAPHIES   OF  YOUTH 

John  Stuart  Mill's  Autobiography  presents  one  of 
the  most  remarkable  modifications  of  the  later  phases 
of  adolescent  experience.  No  boy  ever  had  more  dili- 
gent and  earnest  training  than  his  father  gave  him  or 
responded  better.  He  can  not  remember  when  he 
began  to  learn  Greek,  but  was  told  that  it  was  at  the  age 
of  three.  The  list  of  classical  authors  alone  that  he 
read  in  the  original,  to  say  nothing  of  history,  political, 
scientific,  logical,  and  other  works  before  he  was  twelve, 
is  perhaps  unprecedented  in  all  history.  He  associated 
with  his  father  and  all  his  many  friends  on  their  own 
level,  but  modestly  ascribes  everything  to  his  environ- 
ment, insists  that  in  natural  gifts  he  is  rather  below 
than  above  par,  and  declares  that  everything  he  did 
could  be  done  by  every  boy  of  average  capacity  and 
healthy  physical  constitution.  His  father  made  the 
Greek  virtue  of  temperance  or  moderation  cardinal,  and 
thought  human  life  "  a  poor  thing  at  best  after  the 
freshness  of  youth  and  unsatisfied  curiosity  had  gone 
by."  He  scorned  "  the  intense  "  and  had  only  con- 
tempt for  strong  emotion. 

In  his  teens  Mill  was  an  able  debater  and  writer  for  the  quarterlies, 
and  devoted  to  the  propagation  of  the  theories  of  Bentham,  Ricardo, 
and  associationism.  From  the  age  of  fifteen  he  had  an  object  in  life, 
viz.,  to  reform  the  world.  This  gave  him  happiness,  deep,  perma- 
nent, and  assured  for  the  future,  and  the  idea  of  struggling  to  promote 
utilitarianism  seemed  an  inspiring  program  for  life.  But  in  the 
autumn  of  1826,  when  he  was  twenty  years  of  age,  he  fell  into  "a  dull 
state  of  nerves,"  w^here  he  could  no  longer  enjoy  and  what  had  pro- 
duced pleasure  seemed  insipid;  ''the  state,  I  should  think,  in  which 
converts  to  Methodism  usually  are  when  smitten  by  their  first  *  con- 
viction of  sin.'  In  this  frame  of  mind  it  occurred  to  me  to  put  the 
question  directly  to  myself:  'Suppose  that  all  your  objects  in  life 
were  realized ;  that  all  the  changes  in  institutions  and  opinions  which 
you  are  looking  forward  to  could  be  completely  effected  at  this  very 
instant;  would  this  be  a  great  joy  and  happiness  to  you?'     And  an 

179 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

irrepressible  self-consciousness  distinctly  answered,  'No.'  At  this 
my  heart  sank  within  me :  the  whole  foundation  on  which  my  life  was 
constructed  fell  down.  All  my  happiness  was  to  have  been  found  in 
the  continual  pursuit  of  this  end.  The  end  had  ceased  to  charm,  and 
how  could  there  ever  again  be  any  interest  in  the  means?  I  seemed 
to  have  nothing  left  to  live  for.  At  first  I  hoped  that  the  cloud  would 
pass  away  of  itself,  but  it  did  not.  A  night's  sleep,  the  sovereign 
remedy  for  the  smaller  vexations  of  life,  had  no  effect  on  it.  I  awoke 
to  a  renewed  consciousness  of  the  woful  fact.  I  carried  it  with  me 
into  all  companies,  into  all  occupations.  Hardly  anything  had 
power  to  cause  me  even  a  few  minutes'  oblivion  of  it.  For  some 
months  the  cloud  seemed  to  grow  thicker  and  thicker.  The  lines  in 
Coleridge's  '  Dejection ' — I  was  not  then  acquainted  with  them — 
exactly  described  my  case: 

"  *  A  grief  without  a  pang,  void,  dark,  and  drear, 
A  drowsy,  stifled,  unimpassioned  grief. 
Which  finds  no  natural  outlet  or  relief 
In  word,  or  sigh,  or  tear.' 

"In  vain  I  sought  relief  from  my  favorite  books,  those  memorials 
of  past  nobleness  and  greatness  from  which  I  had  always  hitherto 
drawn  strength  and  animation.  I  read  them  now  without  feeling,  or 
with  the  accustomed  feeling  minus  all  its  charm;  and  I  became  per- 
suaded that  my  love  of  mankind,  and  of  excellence  for  its  own  sake, 
had  worn  itself  out.  I  sought  no  comfort  by  speaking  to  others  of 
what  I  felt.  If  I  had  loved  any  one  sufficiently  to  make  confiding  my 
griefs  a  necessity,  I  should  not  have  been  in  the  condition  I  was.  I 
felt,  too,  that  mine  was  not  an  interesting  or  in  anyway  respectable 
distress.  There  was  nothing  in  it  to  attract  sympathy.  Advice,  if  I 
had  known  where  to  seek  it,  would  have  been  most  precious.  The 
words  of  Macbeth  to  the  physician  often  occurred  to  my  thoughts. 
But  there  was  no  one  on  whom  I  could  build  the  faintest  hope  of 
such  assistance.  My  father,  to  whom  it  would  have  been  natural  to 
me  to  have  recourse  in  any  practical  difficulties,  was  the  last  person 
to  whom,  in  such  a  case  as  this,  I  looked  for  help.  Everything  con- 
vinced me  that  he  had  no  knowledge  of  any  such  mental  state  as  I 
was  suffering  from,  and  that  even  if  he  could  be  made  to  understand 
it,  he  was  not  the  physician  who  could  heal  it.  My  education,  which 
was  wholly  his  work,  had  been  conducted  without  any  regard  to  the 
possibihty  of  its  ending  in  this  result,  and  I  saw  no  use  in  giving  him 
the  pain  of  thinking  that  his  plans  had  failed,  when  the  failure  was 
probably  irremediable,  and,  at  all  events,  beyond  the  power  of  his 
remedies.     Of  other  friends,  I  had  at  that  time  none  to  whom  I  had 

180 


BIOGRAPHIES   OF   YOUTH 

any  hope  of  making  my  condition  intelligible.  It  was,  however, 
abundantly  intelligible  to  myself,  and  the  more  I  dwelt  upon  it  the 
more  hopeless  it  appeared." 

He  now  saw  what  had  hitherto  seemed  incredible,  that  the  habit 
of  analysis  tends  to  wear  away  the  feelings.  He  felt  "  stranded  at  the 
commencement  of  my  voyage,  with  a  well-equipped  ship  and  a 
rudder,  but  no  sail ;  without  any  real  desire  for  the  ends  which  I  had 
been  so  carefully  fitted  out  to  work  for:  no  dehght  in  virtue,  or  the 
general  good,  but  also  just  as  little  in  anything  else.  The  fountains 
of  vanity  and  ambition  seemed  to  have  dried  up  within  me  as  com- 
pletely as  those  of  benevolence."  His  vanity  had  been  gratified  at 
too  early  an  age,  and,  like  all  premature  pleasures,  they  had  caused 
indifference,  until  he  despaired  of  creating  any  fresh  association  of 
pleasure  with  any  objects  of  human  desire.  Meanwhile,  dejected 
and  melancholy  as  he  was  through  the  winter,  he  went  on  mechanic- 
ally with  his  tasks;  thought  he  found  in  Coleridge  the  first  description 
of  what  he  was  feeling;  feared  the  idiosyncrasies  of  his  education  had 
made  him  a  being  unique  and  apart.  *'  I  asked  myself  if  I  could  or  if 
I  was  bound  to  go  on  living,  when  life  must  be  passed  in  this  manner. 
I  generally  answered  to  mj^self  that  I  did  not  think  I  could  possibly 
bear  it  beyond  a  year."  But  within  about  half  that  time,  in  reading 
a  pathetic  passage  of  how  a  mere  boy  felt  that  he  could  save  his 
family  and  take  the  place  of  all  they  had  lost,  a  vivid  conception  of 
the  scene  came  over  him,  and  he  was  moved  to  tears.  From  that 
moment  his  burden  grew  lighter.  He  saw  that  his  heart  was  not 
dead  and  that  he  still  had  some  stuff  left  of  which  character  and 
happiness  are  made;  and  although  there  were  several  later  lapses, 
some  of  which  lasted  many  months,  he  was  never  again  as  miserable 
as  he  had  been. 

These  experiences  left  him  changed  in  two  respects.  He  had  a 
new  theory  of  life,  having  much  in  common  with  the  anti-self-con- 
sciousness theory  of  Carlyle.  He  still  held  happiness  the  end  of  life, 
but  thought  it  must  be  aimed  at  indirectly  and  taken  incidentally. 
The  other  change  was  that  for  the  first  time  he  gave  its  proper  place 
to  internal  culture  of  the  individual,  especially  the  training  of  the 
feelings  which  became  now  cardinal.  He  realized  and  felt  the  power 
of  poetry  and  art ;  was  profoundly  moved  by  music ;  fell  in  love  with 
Wordsworth  and  with  nature ;  and  his  later  depressions  were  best  re- 
lieved by  the  power  of  rural  beauty,  which  wrought  its  charm  not 
because  of  itself  but  by  the  states  and  feelings  it  aroused.  His  ode 
on  the  intimations  of  immortality  showed  that  he  also  had  felt  that 
the  first  freshness  of  youthful  joy  was  not  lasting,  and  had  sought 
and  found  compensation.     He  had  thus  come  to  a  very  different 

181 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

standpoint  from  that  of  his  father,  who  had  up  to  this  time  formed 
his  mind  and  hfe,  and  developed  on  this  basis  his  unique  individuahty. 

Jefferies,  when  eighteen,  began  his  "  Story  of  My 
Heart, ' '  ^  which,  he  said  was  an  absolutely  true  confes- 
sion of  the  stages  of  emotion  in  a  soul  from  which  all 
traces  of  tradition  and  learning  were  erased,  and  which 
stood  face  to  face  with  nature  and  the  unknown. 

His  heart  long  seemed  dusty  and  parched  for  want  of  feeling, 
and  he  frequented  a  hill,  where  the  pores  of  his  soul  opened  to  a  new 
air.  "  Lying  down  on  the  grass,  I  spoke  in  my  soul  to  the  earth,  the 
sun,  the  air,  and  the  distant  sea.  ...  I  desired  to  have  its  strength, 
its  mystery  and  glory.  I  addressed  the  sun,  desiring  the  sole  equiva- 
lent of  his  light  and  brilliance,  his  endurance,  and  unwearied  race.  I 
turned  to  the  blue  heaven  over,  gazing  into  its  depth,  inhaling  its 
exquisite  color  and  sweetness.  The  rich  blue  of  the  unobtainable 
flower  of  the  sky  drew  my  soul  toward  it,  and  there  it  rested,  for 
pure  color  is  the  rest  of  the  heart.  By  all  these  I  prayed.  I  felt  an 
emotion  of  the  soul  beyond  all  definition;  prayer  is  a  puny  thing  to 
it."  He  prayed  by  the  thyme;  by  the  earth;  the  flowers  which  he 
touched;  the  dust  which  he  let  fall  through  his  fingers;  was  filled  with 
"a  rapture,  an  ecstasy,  an  inflatus.  With  this  inflatus  I  prayed.  .  .  . 
I  hid  my  face  in  the  grass ;  I  was  wholly  prostrated ;  I  lost  myself  in  the 
wrestle.  ...  I  see  now  that  what  I  labored  for  was  soul  life,  more 
soul  learning."  After  gazing  upward  he  would  turn  his  face  into  the 
grass,  shutting  out  everything  with  hands  each  side,  till  he  felt  down 
into  the  earth  and  was  absorbed  in  it,  whispering  deep  down  to  its 
center.  Every  natural  impression,  trees,  insects,  air,  clouds,  he  used 
for  prayer,  "that  my  soul  might  be  more  than  the  cosmos  of  life." 
His  "Lyra"  prayer  was  to  live  a  more  exalted  and  intense  soul  life; 
enjoy  more  bodily  pleasure  and  live  long  and  find  power  to  execute 
his  designs.  He  often  tried,  but  failed  for  years  to  write  at  least  a 
meager  account  of  these  experiences.  He  felt  himself  immortal  just 
as  he  felt  beauty.  He  was  in  eternity  already;  the  supernatural  is 
only  the  natural  misnamed.  As  he  lay  face  down  on  the  grass,  seizing 
it  with  both  hands,  he  longed  for  death,  to  be  burned  on  a  pyre  of  pine 
wood  on  a  high  hill,  to  have  his  ashes  scattered  wide  and  broadcast, 
to  be  thrown  into  the  space  he  longed  for  while  living,  but  he  feared 
that  such  a  luxury  of  resolution  into  the  elements  would  be  too  costly, 
Thus  his  naked  mind,  close  against  naked  mother  Nature,  wrested 

1  Longmans,  Green  and  Co.     London,  1891,  2nd  ed. 

182 


BIOGRAPHIES   OF   YOUTH 

from  her  the  conviction  of  soul,  immortality,  deity,  under  conditions 
as  primitive  as  those  of  the  cave  man,  and  his  most  repeated  prayer 
was,  ''Give  me  the  deepest  soul  life." 

In  other  moods  he  felt  the  world  outr^-human,  and  his  mind  could 
by  no  twist  be  fitted  to  the  cosmos.  Ugly,  designless  creatures 
caused  him  to  cease  to  look  for  deity  in  nature,  where  all  happens  by 
chance.  He  at  length  concluded  there  is  something  higher  than  soul 
and  above  deity,  and  better  than  God,  for  which  he  searched  and 
labored.  He  found  favorite  thinking  places,  to  which  he  made 
pilgrimages,  where  he  "felt  out  into  the  depths  of  the  ether."  His 
frame  could  not  bear  the  labor  his  heart  demanded.  Work  of  body 
was  his  meat  and  drink.  ''Never  have  I  had  enough  of  it.  I 
wearied  long  before  I  was  satisfied,  and  weariness  did  not  bring  a 
cessation  of  desire,  the  thirst  was  still  there.  I  rode;  I  used  the  ax; 
I  spht  tree-trunks  with  wedges;  my  arms  tired,  but  my  spirit  re- 
mained fresh  and  chafed  against  the  physical  weariness."  Had  he 
been  indefinitely  stronger,  he  would  have  longed  for  more  strength. 
He  was  often  out  of  doors  all  day  and  often  half  the  night;  wanted 
more  sunshine;  wished  the  day  was  sixty  hours  long;  took  pleasure  in 
braving  the  cold  so  that  it  should  be  not  life's  destro3'er  but  its  re- 
newer.  Yet  he  abhorred  asceticism.  He  wrestled  with  the  problem 
of  the  origin  of  his  soul  and  its  destiny,  but  could  find  no  solution; 
revolted  at  the  assertion  that  all  is  designed  for  the  best;  "a  man  of 
intellect  and  humanity  could  cause  everything  to  happen  in  an  in- 
finitely superior  manner."  He  discovered  that  no  one  ever  died  of 
old  age,  but  only  of  disease;  that  we  do  not  even  know  what  old  age 
would  be  like;  found  that  his  soul  is  infinite,  but  lies  in  abeyance; 
that  we  are  murdered  by  our  ancestors  and  must  roll  back  the  tide 
of  death;  that  a  hundredth  part  of  man's  labor  would  suffice  for  his 
support ;  that  idleness  is  no  evil ;  that  in  the  future  nine-tenths  of  the 
time  will  be  leisure,  and  to  that  end  he  will  work  with  all  his  heart. 
"I  was  not  more  than  eighteen  when  an  inner  and  esoteric  meaning 
began  to  come  to  me  from  all  the  visible  universe,  and  indefinable 
aspirations  filled  me." 

Interesting  as  is  this  document,  it  is  impossible  to  avoid  the  sus- 
picion that  the  seventeen  years  which  intervened  between  the  begin- 
ning of  these  experiences  and  their  final  record,  coupled  with  the 
perhaps  unconscious  tendency  toward  literary  effect,  detract  more  or 
less  from  their  value  as  documents  of  adolescent  nature. 

Mr.  H.  Fielding  Hall,  author  of  "  The  Soul  of  a 
People, ' '  has  since  written  a  book  ^  in  which,  beginning 

1  The  Hearts  of  Men.     Macmillan,  London,  1891,  p.  324. 
13  183 


YOUTH  :  ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

with  many  definitions  of  Christianity,  weighing  the  opin- 
ion of  those  who  think  all  our  advance  is  made  because 
of,  against  those  who  think  it  in  spite  of  Christianity, 
he  proceeds  to  give  the  story  of  a  boy,  probably  himself, 
who  till  twelve  was  almost  entirely  reared  by  women 
and  with  children  younger  than  himself. 

He  was  sickly,  and  believed  not  in  the  Old  but  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment; in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  which  he  supposed  all  accepted 
and  lived  by;  that  war  and  wealth  were  bad  and  learning  apt  to  be 
a  snare;  that  the  ideal  life  was  that  of  a  poor  curate,  working  hard 
and  unhappy.  At  twelve,  he  went  to  a  boarding-school,  passed  from 
a  woman's  world  into  a  man's,  out  of  the  New  Testament  into  the 
Old,  out  of  dreams  into  reality.  War  was  a  glorious  opportunity,  and 
all  followed  the  British  victories,  which  were  announced  publicly. 
Big  boys  were  going  to  Sandhurst  or  Woolwich;  there  were  parties; 
and  the  school  code  never  turned  the  other  cheek.  Wars  were  God's 
storms,  stirring  stagnant  natures  to  new  life ;  wealth  was  worshiped ; 
certain  lies  were  an  honor;  knowledge  was  an  extremely  desirable 
thing — all  this  was  at  first  new  and  delightful,  but  extremely  wicked. 
Sunday  was  the  only  other  Old  Testament  rule,  but  was  then  for- 
gotten. Slowly  a  repugnance  of  religion  in  all  its  forms  arose.  He 
felt  his  teachers  hypocrites;  he  raised  no  alarm,  "for  he  was  hardly 
conscious  that  his  anchor  had  dragged  or  that  he  had  lost  hold"  of  it 
forever.  At  eighteen,  he  read  Darwin  and  found  that  if  he  were 
right,  Genesis  was  wrong;  man  had  risen,  not  fallen;  if  a  part  was 
wrong,  the  whole  was.  If  God  made  the  world,  the  devil  seemed  to 
rule  it ;  prayer  can  not  influence  him ;  the  seven  days  of  creation  were 
periods.  Heaven  knows  how  long.  Why  did  all  profess  and  no  one 
believe  religion?  Why  is  God  so  stern  and  yet  so  partial,  and  how 
about  the  Trinity?  Then  explanations  were  given.  Heaven  grew 
repulsive,  as  a  place  for  the  poor,  the  maimed,  the  stupid,  the  child- 
ish, and  those  unfit  for  earth  generally. 

Faiths  came  from  the  East.  ''The  North  has  originated  only 
Thor,  Odin,  Balder,  Valkyres."  The  gloom  and  cold  drive  man  into 
himself;  do  not  open  him.  In  the  East  one  can  live  in  quiet  solitude, 
with  no  effort,  close  to  nature.  The  representatives  of  all  faiths  wear 
ostentatiously  their  badges,  pray  in  public,  and  no  one  sneers  at  all 
religions.  Oriental  faiths  have  no  organization;  there  is  no  head  of 
Hinduism,  Buddhism,  or  hardly  of  Mohammedanism.  There  are  no 
missions,  but  religion  grows  rankly  from  a  rich  soil,  so  the  boy  wrote 

184 


BIOGRAPHIES   OF    YOUTH 

three  demands:  a  reasonable  theory  of  the  universe,  a  workable  and 
working  code  of  conduct,  and  a  promise  of  something  desirable  here- 
after.    So  he  read  books  and  tried  to  make  a  system. 

On  a  hill,  in  a  thunder-storm  in  the  East,  he  realized  how  Thor 
was  born.  Man  fears  thunder;  it  seems  the  voice  of  a  greater  man. 
Deny  eyes,  legs,  and  body  of  the  Deity,  and  nothing  is  left.  God  as 
an  abstract  spirit  is  unthinkable,  but  Buddhism  offers  us  no  God, 
only  law.  Necessity,  blind  force,  law,  or  a  free  personal  will — that  is 
the  alternative.  Freedom  limits  omnipotence;  the  two  can  never  mix. 
"The  German  Emperor's  God,  clanking  round  the  heavenly  mansions 
wearing  a  German  Pickelhaube  and  swearing  German  oaths,"  is  not 
satisfactory.  Man's  God  is  what  he  admires  most  in  himself;  he 
can  be  propitiated,  hence  atonement ;  you  can  not  break  a  law,  but 
you  can  study  it.  Inquirj^  not  submission,  is  the  attitude.  Perhaps 
both  destiny  and  freedom  are  true,  but  truth  is  for  the  sake  of 
light. 

Thor  had  no  moral  code;  the  Greeks  were  unmoral.  Jehovah  at 
first  asked  only  fear,  reverence,  and  worship.  This  gives  no  guide 
to  life.  Most  codes  are  directed  against  a  foe  and  against  pain. 
Truth,  mercy,  courtesy — these  were  slowly  added  to  reverence;  then 
sanitary  rules,  hence  castes.  Two  codes,  those  of  Christ  and  Buddha, 
tower  above  all  others.  They  are  the  same  in  praising  not  wealth, 
greatness,  or  power,  but  purity,  renunciation  of  the  world,  as  if  one 
fitted  one's  self  for  one  by  being  unfitted  for  the  other  world. 

Is  heaven  a  bribe?  Its  ideals  are  those  of  children,  of  girl  angels, 
white  wings,  floating  dresses,  no  sheep,  but  lambs.  "Surely  there  is 
nothing  in  all  the  world  so  babyish."  One  can  hardly  imagine  a  man 
with  a  deep  voice,  with  the  storm  of  life  beating  his  soul,  amid  those 
baby  faces.  If  happiness  in  any  act  or  attitude  is  perfect,  it  will  last 
forever.  Where  is  due  the  weariness  or  satiety?  But  if  happiness 
be  perfect,  this  is  impossible;  so  life  would  be  monotony  akin  to 
annihilation.  But  life  is  change,  and  change  is  misery.  There  is 
effort  here;  but  there  will  be  none  in  the  great  peace  that  passes 
understanding;  no  defeat,  therefore  no  victory;  no  friends,  because  no 
enemies;  no  joyous  meetings,  because  no  farewells.  It  is  the  shadows 
and  the  dark  mysteries  that  sound  the  depths  of  our  hearts.  No  man 
that  ever  lived,  if  told  that  he  could  be  young  again  or  go  to  any 
heaven,  would  choose  the  latter.  Men  die  for  many  things,  but  all 
fear  the  beyond.  Thus  no  religion  gives  us  an  intelligible  First  Cause, 
a  code  or  a  heaven  that  we  want.  The  most  religious  man  is  the 
peasant  listening  to  the  angelus,  putting  out  a  little  ghi  for  his  God ; 
the  woman  crying  in  the  pagoda.  Thus  we  can  only  turn  to  the 
hearts  of  men  for  the  truth  of  religion. 

185 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

Biographies  and  autobiographies  furnish  many  pho- 
tographic glimpses  of  the  struggles  and  experiences  of 
early  adolescent  years. 

Anthony  Trollope's  autobiography  ^  is  pitiful.  He  was  poor  and 
disliked  by  most  of  his  masters  and  treated  with  ignominy  by  his 
fellow  pupils.  He  describes  himself  as  always  in  disgrace.  At  fifteen 
he  walked  three  miles  each  way  twice  a  day  to  and  from  school.  As  a 
sizar  he  seemed  a  wretched  farmer's  boy,  reeking  from  the  dunghill, 
sitting  next  the  sons  of  big  peers.  All  were  against  him,  and  he  was 
allowed  to  join  no  games,  and  learned,  he  tells  us,  absolutely  nothing 
but  a  little  Greek  and  Latin.  Once  only,  goaded  to  desperation,  he 
rallied  and  whipped  a  bully.  The  boy  was  never  able  to  overcome  the 
isolation  of  his  school  position,  and  while  he  coveted  popularity  with  an 
eagerness  which  was  almost  mean,  and  longed  exceedingly  to  excel 
in  cricket  or  with  the  racquet,  was  allowed  to  know  nothing  of  them. 
He  remembers  at  nineteen  never  to  have  had  a  lesson  in  writing, 
arithmetic,  French,  or  German.  He  knew  his  masters  by  their 
ferules  and  they  him.  He  believes  that  he  has  "  been  flogged  oftener 
than  any  human  being  alive."  ''It  was  just  possible  to  obtain  five 
scourgings  in  one  day  at  Winchester,  and  I  have  often  boasted  that  I 
have  obtained  them  all."  Prizes  were  distributed  prodigally,  but 
he  never  got  one.  For  twelve  years  of  tuition,  he  says,  "I  do  not 
remember  that  I  ever  knew  a  lesson." 

At  this  age  he  describes  himself  as  "an  idle,  desolate,  hanger-on 
.  .  .  without  an  idea  of  a  career  or  a  profession  or  a  trade,"  but  he 
was  tolerably  happy  because  he  could  fancy  himself  in  love  with 
pretty  girls  and  had  been  removed  from  the  real  misery  of  school,  but 
had  not  a  single  aspiration  regarding  his  future.  Three  of  his  house- 
hold were  dying  of  consumption,  and  his  mother  was  day  nurse, 
night  nurse,  and  divided  her  time  between  pill-boxes  and  the  ink- 
bottle,  for  when  she  was  seventy-six  she  had  written  one  hundred 
and  forty  volumes,  the  first  of  which  was  not  written  till  she  was  f^ity. 

Gradually  the  boy  became  alive  to  the  blighted  ambition  of  his 
father's  life  and  the  strain  his  mother  was  enduring,  nursing  the 
dying  household  and  writing  novels  to  provide  a  decent  roof  for  them 
to  die  under.  Anthony  got  a  position  at  the  post-office  without  an 
examination.  He  knew  no  Freich  nor  science;  was  a  bad  speller 
and  worse  writer  and  could  not  have  sustained  an  examination  on 
any  subject.     Still  he  could  not  bear  idleness,  and  was  always  going 

1  An  Autobiography.  Edited  by  H.  M.  Trollope.  2  vols.  London, 
1883. 

186 


BIOGRAPHIES   OF  YOUTH 

about  with  some  castle  in  the  air  firmly  built  in  his  mind,  carrying  on 
for  weeks  and  years  the  same  continuous  story;  binding  himself  down 
to  certain  laws,  proprieties,  and  unities;  always  his  own  hero,  ex- 
cluding everything  violently  improbable.  To  this  practise,  which  he 
calls  dangerous  and  which  began  six  or  seven  years  before  he  went  to 
the  post-office,  he  ascribes  his  power  to  maintain  an  interest  in  a  fic- 
titious story  and  to  live  in  an  entirely  outside  imaginative  life. 
During  these  seven  years  he  acquired  a  character  of  irregularity  and 
grew  reckless. 

Mark  Pattison  ^  shows  us  how  his  real  life  began  in  the  middle 
teens,  when  his  energy  was  "directed  to  one  end,  to  improve  myself"; 
"to  form  my  ovm  mind;  to  sound  things  thoroughly;  to  be  free  from 
the  bondage  of  unreason  and  the  traditional  prejudices  which,  when 
I  first  began  to  think,  constituted  the  whole  of  my  mental  fabric." 
He  entered  upon  life  with  a  "hide-bound  and  contracted  intellect," 
and  depicts  "something  of  the  steps  by  which  I  emerged  from  that 
frozen  condition."  He  believes  that  to  "remember  the  dreams  and 
confusions  of  childhood  and  never  to  lose  the  recollection  of  the  curi- 
osity and  simplicity  of  that  age,  is  one  of  the  great  gifts  of  the  poetic 
character,"  although  this,  he  tells  us,  w^as  extraordinarily  true  of 
George  Sand,  but  not  of  himself.  From  the  age  of  twelve  on,  a  Fel- 
lowship at  Oriel  was  the  ideal  of  his  life,  and  although  he  became  a 
commoner  there  at  seventeen,  his  chief  marvel  is  that  he  was  so  im- 
mature and  unimpressionable. 

William  Hale  White ^  learned  little  at  school,  save  Latin  and  good 
penmanship,  but  his  very  life  was  divided  into  halves — Sundays 
and  week  days — and  he  reflects  at  some  length  upon  the  immense  dan- 
gers of  the  early  teens ;  the  physiological  and  yet  subtler  psychic  pen- 
alties of  error;  callousness  to  fine  pleasures;  hardening  of  the  con- 
science ;  and  deplores  the  misery  which  a  little  instruotion  might  have 
saved  him.  At  fourteen  he  underwent  conversion,  understood  in  his 
sect  to  be  a  transforming  miracle,  releasing  higher  and  imprisoning 
lower  powers.  He  compares  it  to  the  saving  of  a  mind  from  vice  by 
falling  in  love  with  a  woman  who  is  adored,  or  the  reclamation  of  a 
young  woman  from  idleness  and  vanity  by  motherhood.  But  as  a 
boy  he  was  convinced  of  many  things  which  were  mere  phrases,  and 
attended  prayer-meetings  for  the  clanship  of  being  marked  off  from 

1  See  his  Memoirs.     London,  1885. 

2  See  Autobiography  of  Mark  Rutherford  (pseudonym  for  W.  H. 
White),  edited  by  Reuben  Shapcott.     2  vols.     London,  1881. 

187 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

the  world  and  of  walking  home  with  certain  girls.  He  learned  to  say 
in  prayer  that  there  was  nothing  good  in  him,  that  he  was  rotten  and 
filthy  and  his  soul  a  mass  of  putrefying  sores ;  but  no  one  took  him  at 
his  word  and  expelled  him  from  society,  but  thought  the  better  of 
him.  Soon  he  began  to  study  theology,  but  found  no  help  in  sup- 
pressing tempestuous  lust,  in  understanding  the  Bible,  or  getting  his 
doubts  answered,  and  all  the  lectures  seemed  irrelevant  chattering. 
An  infidel  was  a  monster  whom  he  had  rarely  ever  seen.  At  nineteen 
he  began  to  preach,  but  his  heart  was  untouched  till  he  read  Words- 
worth's lyrical  ballads,  and  this  recreated  a  living  God  for  him, 
melted  his  heart  to  tears,  and  made  him  long  for  companionship;  its 
effect  was  instantly  seen  in  his  preaching,  and  soon  made  him  slightly 
suspected  as  heretical.  ^ 

John  Addington  Symonds,  in  his  autobiography,  describes  his  "  in- 
sect-like" devotion  to  creed  in  the  green  infancy  of  rituahsm.  In  his 
early  teens  at  boarding-school  he  and  his  mates,  with  half  sincerity, 
followed  a  classmate  to  compline,  donned  surplices,  tossed  censers, 
arranged  altars  in  their  studies,  bought  bits  of  painted  glass  for  their 
windows  and  illuminated  crucifixes  with  gold  dust  and  vermilion. 
When  he  was  confirmed,  this  was  somewhat  of  an  epoch.  Prepara- 
tion was  like  a  plowshare,  although  it  turned  up  nothing  valuable, 
and  stimulated  esthetic  and  emotional  ardor.  In  a  dim  way  he  felt 
God  near,  but  he  did  not  learn  to  fling  the  arms  of  the  soul  in  faith 
around  the  cross  of  Christ.  Later  the  revelation  he  found  in  Plato 
removed  him  farther  from  boyhood.  He  fell  in  love  with  gray 
Gothic  churches,  painted  glass,  organ  lofts,  etc. 

Walter  Pater  has  described  phases  of  ferment,  perhaps  largely  his 
own,  in  the  character  of  Florian  Deleal;  his  rapture  of  the  red  haw- 
thorn blossoms,  ''absolutely  the  reddest  of  all  things  ";  his  times  of 
"seemingly  exclusive  predominance  of  interest  in  beautiful  physical 
things,  a  kind  of  tyranny  of  the  senses";  and  his  later  absorbing 
efforts  to  estimate  the  proportion  of  the  sensuous  and  ideal,  assigning 
most  importance  to  sensible  vehicles  and  occasions;  associating  all 
thoughts  with  touch  and  sight  as  a  link  between  himself  and  things, 

1  The  rest  of  the  two  volumes  is  devoted  to  his  further  life  as  a  dis- 
senting minister,  who  later  became  something  of  a  literary  man;  relating 
how  he  was  slowly  driven  to  leave  his  little  church,  how  he  outgrew  and 
broke  with  the  girl  to  whom  he  was  engaged,  whom  he  marvelously  met 
and  married  when  both  were  well  on  in  years,  and  how  strangely  he  was 
influenced  by  the  free-thinker  Mardon  and  his  remarkable  daughter 
All  in  all  it  is  a  rare  study  of  emancipation. 

188 


BIOGRAPHIES   OF   YOUTH 

till  he  became  more  and  more  "unable  to  care  for  or  think  of  soul 
but  as  in  an  actual  body";  comforted  in  the  contemplation  of  death 
by  the  thought  of  flesh  turning  to  violets  and  almost  oppressed  by  the 
pressure  of  the  sensible  world,  his  longings  for  beauty  intensifying 
his  fear  of  death.  He  loved  to  gaze  on  dead  faces  in  the  Paris  Morgue 
although  the  haunt  of  them  made  the  sunshine  sickly  for  days,  and 
his  long  fancy  that  they  had  not  really  gone  nor  were  quite  motion- 
less, but  led  a  secret,  half  fugitive  life,  freer  by  night,  and  perhaps 
dodging  about  in  their  old  haunts  with  no  great  good-will  toward  the 
living,  made  him  by  turns  pity  and  hate  the  ghosts  who  came  back 
in  the  wind,  beating  at  the  doors.  His  religious  nature  gradually 
yielded  to  a  mystical  belief  in  Bible  personages  in  some  indefinite 
place  as  the  reflexes  and  patterns  of  our  nobler  self,  whose  companion- 
ship made  the  world  more  satisfying.  There  was  "a.  constant  sub- 
stitution of  the  typical  for  the  actual,"  and  angels  might  be  met  any- 
where. "A  deep  mysticity  brooded  over  real  meetings  and  partings," 
marriages,  and  many  acts  and  accidents  of  life.  "The  very  colors 
of  things  became  themselves  weighty  with  meanings,"  or  "full  of 
penitence  and  peace."  "  For  a  time  he  walked  through  the  world  in 
a  sustained,  not  unpleasurable  awe  generated  by  the  habitual  recogni- 
tion, beside  every  circumstance  and  event  of  life,  of  its  celestial 
correspondent." 

In  D.  C.  Boulger's  Life  of  General  Charles  Gordon  *  he  records 
how,  like  Nelson  Clive,  his  hero  was  prone  to  boys'  escapades  and 
outbreaks  that  often  made  him  the  terror  of  his  superiors.  He  was 
no  bookworm,  but  famous  as  the  possessor  of  high  spirits,  very 
often  involved  in  affairs  that  necessitated  discipline,  and  seemed 
greatly  out  of  harmony  with  the  popular  idea  of  the  ascetic  of  Mount 
Carmel.  As  a  schoolboy  he  made  wonderful  squirts  "that  would 
wet  you  through  in  a  minute."  One  Sunday  twenty-seven  panes  of 
glass  in  a  large  storehouse  were  broken  with  screws  shot  through 
them  by  his  cross-bow  "  for  ventilation."  Ringing  bells  and  pushing 
young  boys  in,  butting  an  unpopular  officer  severely  in  the  stomach 
with  his  head  and  taking  the  punishment,  hitting  a  bully  wuth  a 
clothes-brush  and  being  put  back  six  months  in  the  Royal  Military 
Academy  at  Woolwich ;  these  are  the  early  outcrops  of  one  side  of  his 
dual  character.  Although  more  soldier  than  saint,  he  had  a  very 
cheery,  genial  side.  He  was  always  ready  to  take  even  the  severest 
punishment  for  all  his  scrapes  due  to  excessive  high  spirits.  When 
one  of  his  superiors  declared  that  he  would  never  make  an  officer,  he 

1  London,  1896,  vol.  1, 
189 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

felt  his  honor  touched,  and  his  vigorous  and  expressive  reply  was  to 
tear  the  epaulets  from  his  shoulders  and  throw  them  at  his  superior's 
feet.  He  had  already  developed  some  of  the  rather  moody  love  of 
seclusion  that  was  marked  later,  but  religion  did  not  strike  him 
deeply  enough  to  bring  him  into  the  church  until  he  was  twenty-one, 
when  he  took  his  first  sacrament.  On  one  occasion  he  declined 
promotion  within  his  reach  because  he  would  have  had  to  pass  a 
friend  to  get  it.  He  acted  generally  on  his  impulses,  which  were 
perhaps  better  than  his  judgments,  took  great  pleasure  in  correspond- 
ing on  religious  topics  with  his  elder  sister,  and  early  formed  the  habit 
of  excessive  smoking  which  gravely  afTected  his  health  later.  His 
was  the  rare  combination  of  inner  repose  and  confidence,  inter- 
rupted by  spells  of  gaiety. 

Williamson,  in  his  "  Life  of  Holman  Hunt,"  *  tells  us  that  at  thirteen 
he  was  removed  from  school  as  inapt  in  study.  He  began  to  spend 
his  time  in  drawing  in  his  copybooks.  He  was  made  clerk  to  an 
auctioneer,  who  fortunately  encouraged  his  passion,  and  at  sixteen 
was  with  a  calico  printer.  Here  he  amused  himself  by  drawing  flies 
on  the  window,  which  his  employer  tried  to  brush  off.  There  was  the 
greatest  home  opposition  to  his  studying  art.  After  being  rejected 
twice,  he  was  admitted  at  seventeen  to  the  Academy  school  as  a  pro- 
bationer, and  the  next  year,  in  1845,  as  a  student.  Here  he  met 
Millais  and  Rossetti  and  was  able  to  relieve  the  strain  on  his  mind, 
which  the  worry  of  his  father  concerning  his  course  caused  him,  and 
very  soon  his  career  began. 

At  thirteen  Fitzjames  Stephen^  roused  himself  to  thrash  a  big 
boy  who  had  long  bullied  him,  and  became  a  fighter.  In  his  sixteenth 
year,  he  grew  nearly  five  inches,  but  was  so  shy  and  timid  at  Eton 
that  he  says,  "  I  was  like  a  sensible  grown-up  woman  among  a  crowd 
of  rough  boys";  but  in  the  reaction  to  the  long  abuse  his  mind  was 
steeled  against  oppression,  tyranny,  and  every  kind  of  unfairness. 
He  read  Paine 's  "  Age  of  Reason,"  and  went  "  through  the  Bible  as  a 
man  might  go  through  a  wood,  cutting  down  trees.  The  priests  can 
stick  them  in  again,  but  they  will  not  make  them  grow." 

Dickens  has  given  us  some  interesting  adolescents. 
Miss  Dingwall  in  ' '  Sketches  by  Boz, "  ' '  very  sentimental 


iMacmillan,   1902. 

2  Life  of  Sir  J.   F.   Stephen.     By  his  brother,  Leslie  Stephen.     Lon- 
don, 1895. 

190 


BIOGRAPHIES   OF   YOUTH 

and  romantic  ";  the  tempery  young  Nickleby,  who,  at 
nineteen,  thrashed  Squeers ;  Barnaby  Rudge,  idiotic  and 
very  muscular ;  Joe  Willet,  persistently  treated  as  a  boy 
till  he  ran  away  to  join  the  army  and  married  Dolly  Var- 
den,  perhaps  the  most  exuberant,  good-humored,  and 
beautiful  girl  in  all  the  Dickens  gallery ;  Martin  Chuzzle- 
wit,  who  also  ran  away,  as  did  David  Copperfield,  per- 
haps the  most  true  to  adolescence  because  largely  reminis- 
cent of  the  author 's  own  life ;  Steerf orth,  a  stranger  from 
home,  and  his  victim.  Little  Emily;  and  to  some  extent 
Sam  Weller,  Dick  Swiveller,  the  Marchioness,  young  Pod- 
snap,  the  Artful  Dodger,  and  Charley  Bates;  while  Oli- 
ver Twist,  Little  Nell,  and  Little  Dorrit,  Joe  and  Turvey- 
drop  in  Bleak  House,  and  Paul  Dombey,  young  as  they 
were,  show  the  beginning  of  the  pubescent  change.  Most 
of  his  characters,  however,  are  so  overdrawn  and  carica- 
tured as  to  be  hardly  true  to  lif  e.^ 

In  the  ' '  Romance  of  John  Inglesant, '  ^  ^  by  J.  H. 
Shorthouse,  we  have  a  remarkable  picture  of  an  unusually 
gifted  youth,  who  played  an  important  role  in  the  days 
of  Cromwell  and  King  Charles,  and  who  was  long 
poised  in  soul  between  the  Church  of  Rome  and  the 
English  party.  He  was  very  susceptible  to  the  fascina- 
tion of  superstition,  romance,  and  day-dreaming,  and 
at  eleven  absorbed  his  master's  Rosicrucian  theories  of 
spiritual  existence  where  spirits  held  converse  with  each 
other  and  with  mankind.  A  mystic  Platonism,  which 
taught  that  Pindar's  story  of  the  Argo  was  only  a 
recipe   for  the  philosopher's  stone,   fascinated   him   at 


1  See  the  very  impressive  account  of  Dickens's  characterization  of 
childhood  and  youth,  and  of  his  great  but  hitherto  inadequately  recog- 
nized interest  and  influence  as  an  educator.  Dicken.:;  as  an  Educator. 
James  L.  Hughes.     D.  Appleton  and  Co.,  New  York,  1901,  p.  319. 

2  John  Inglesant:  A  Romance.     6th  ed.     Macmillan,  1886. 

191 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

fourteen.  The  philosophy  of  obedience  and  of  the  sub- 
jection of  reason  to  authority  was  early  taught  him, 
and  he  sought  to  live  from  within,  hearing  only  the 
divine  law,  as  the  worshipers  of  Cybele  heard  only  the 
flutes.  His  twin  brother  Eustace  was  an  active  world- 
ling, and  soon  he  followed  him  to  court  as  page  to  the 
Queen,  but  delighted  more  and  more  in  wandering  apart 
and  building  air  castles.  For  a  time  he  was  entirely 
swayed,  and  his  life  directed,  by  a  Jesuit  Father,  who 
taught  him  the  crucifix  and  the  rosary.  At  sixteen  the 
doctrine  of  divine  illumination  fascinated  him.  He 
struggled  to  find  the  path  of  true  devotion;  abandoned 
himself  to  extremely  ritualistic  forms  of  worship ;  dab- 
bled a  little  in  alchemy  and  astrology  to  help  develop 
the  divine  nature  within  him  and  to  attain  the  beatific 
vision.  Soon  he  was  introduced  to  the  ''  Protestant 
nunnery,"  as  it  was  called,  where  the  venerable  Mr. 
Ferran,  a  friend  of  George  Herbert's,  was  greatly  taken 
by  Inglesant's  accomplishments  and  grace  of  manner. 
Various  forms  of  extremely  High  Church  yet  Protestant 
worship  were  celebrated  here  each  day  with  great  devo- 
tion, until  he  became  disgusted  with  Puritanism  and 
craved  to  participate  in  the  office  of  mass.  At  this  point, 
however,  he  met  Mr.  Hobbes,  whose  rude  but  forcible 
condemnation  of  papacy  restrained  him  from  casting  his 
lot  with  it.  At  seventeen,  he  saw  one  night  a  real  ap- 
parition of  the  just  executed  Strafford.  The  last  act 
of  his  youth,  which  we  can  note  here,  was  soon  after  he 
w^as  twenty,  when  he  fell  in  love  with  the  charming 
and  saintly  Mary  Collet.  The  rough  Puritan  Thorne 
had  made  her  proposals  at  which  she  revolted,  but  she 
and  Inglesant  confessed  love  to  each  other;  she  saw, 
however,  that  they  had  a  way  of  life  marked  out  for 
themselves  by  an  inner  impulse  and  light.     This  call- 

192 


BIOGRAPHIES   OF  YOUTH 

ing  they  must  follow  and  abandon  love,  and  now  John 
plunged  into  the  war  on  the  side  of  the  King. 

W.  J.  Stillman  ^  has  written  with  unusual  interest 
and  candor  the  story  of  his  own  early  life. 

As  a  boy  he  was  frenzied  at  the  first  sight  of  the  sea;  caught 
the  whip  and  lashed  the  horses  in  an  unconscious  delirium,  and 
always  remembered  this  as  one  of  the  most  vivid  experiences  of 
his  life.  He  had  a  period  of  nature  worship.  His  first  trout 
w^as  a  dehrium,  and  he  danced  about  wildly  and  furiously.  He 
relates  his  very  vivid  impressions  of  the  religious  orthodoxy  in 
which  he  was  reared,  especially  revival  sermons;  his  occasional 
falsehoods  to  escape  severe  punishment;  his  baptism  at  tien  or 
eleven  in  a  river  in  midwinter;  the  somberness  of  his  intellectual 
life,  which  was  long  very  apathetic;  his  phenomenal  stupidity  for 
years;  his  sudden  insurrections  in  which  he  thrashed  bullies  at 
school;  his  fear  that  he  should  be  sent  home  in  disgrace  for  bad 
scholarship;  and  how  at  last,  after  seven  years  of  dulness,  at  the 
age  of  fourteen,  ''the  mental  fog  broke  away  suddenly,  and  before 
the  term  ended  I  could  construe  the  Latin  in  less  nme  than  it 
took  to  recite  it,  and  the  demonstrations  of  Euclid  were  as  plain 
and  clear  as  a  fairj'-  story.  My  memory  came  back  so  distinctly 
that  I  could  recite  long  poems  after  a  single  reading,  and  no  member 
of  the  class  passed  a  more  brilliant  examination  at  the  end  of  the  term 
than  I;  and,  at  the  end  of  the  second  term,  I  could  recite  the  whole 
of  Legendre's  geometry,  plane  and  spherical,  from  beginning  to  end 
without  a  question,  and  the  class  examination  was  recorded  as  the 
most  remarkable  which  the  academy  had  witnessed  for  many  years. 
I  have  never  been  able  to  conceive  an  explanation  of  this  curious 
phenomenon,  which  I  record  only  as  of  possible  interest  to  some  one 
interested  in  psychology." 

A,  Bronson  Alcott^  was  the  son  of  a  Connecticut  farmer.  He 
began  a  diary  at  twelve;  aspired  vainly  to  enter  Yale,  and  after  much 
restlessness  at  the  age  of  nineteen  left  home  with  two  trunks  for 
Virginia  to  peddle  on  foot,  hoping  to  teach  school.  Here  he  had  a 
varying  and  often  very  hard  experience  for  years. 

1  The  Autobiography  of  a  Journalist.  2  vols.  Houghton,  Mifflin 
and  Co.,  Boston,  1901. 

2  A.  Bronson  Alcott,  His  Life  and  Philosophy.  By  F.  B.  Sanborn  and 
W.  T.  Harris.     Roberts  Bros.,  Boston,  1893. 

193 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

Horace  Bushnell's  ^  parents  represented  the  Episcopal  and  liberal 
Congregational  Church.  His  early  life  was  spent  on  a  farm  and  in 
attending  a  country  academy.  He  became  profoundly  interested  in 
religion  in  the  early  teens  and  developed  extreme  interest  in  nature. 
At  seventeen,  while  tending  a  carding  machine,  he  wrote  a  paper 
on  Calvinism.  At  nineteen  he  united  with  the  church,  and  entered 
Yale  when  he  was  twenty-one,  in  1823.  Later  he  tried  to  teach 
school,  but  left  it,  declaring  he  would  rather  lay  stone  wall;  worked 
on  a  journal,  but  withdrew,  finding  it  a  terrible  life ;  studied  law  for  a 
year,  became  a  tutor  at  Yale,  experienced  a  reconversion  and  entered 
the  ministry. 

A  well-known  American,  who  wishes  his  name  with- 
held, writes  me  of  his  youth  as  follows: 

''  First  came  the  love  of  emotion  and  lurid  romance  reading.  My 
mind  was  full  of  adventure,  dreams  of  underground  passages,  and 
imprisoned  beauties  whom  I  rescued.  I  wrote  a  story  in  red  ink, 
which  I  never  read,  but  a  girl  friend  did,  and  called  it  magnificent. 
The  girl  fever,  too,  made  me  idealize  first  one  five  years  older  than  I, 
later  another  three  years  older,  and  still  later  one  of  my  own  age.  I 
would  have  eaten  dirt  for  each  of  them  for  a  year  or  two;  was  ex- 
tremely gallant  and  the  hero  of  many  romances  for  two,  but  all  the 
time  so  bashful  that  I  scarcely  dared  speak  to  one  of  them,  and  no 
schoolmate  ever  suspected  it  all.  Music  also  became  a  craze  at 
fourteen.  Before,  I  had  hated  lessons,  now  I  was  thrilled  and  would 
be  a  musician,  despite  my  parents'  protests.  I  practised  the  piano 
furiously ;  wrote  music  and  copied  stacks  of  it ;  made  a  list  of  several 
hundred  pieces  and  tunes,  including  everything  musical  I  knew; 
would  imagine  a  crowded  hall,  where  I  played  and  swayed  with  fine 
airs.  The  vast  assembly  applauded  and  would  not  let  me  go,  but  all 
the  time  it  was  a  simple  piece  and  I  was  a  very  ordinary  player.  At 
fifty  years,  this  is  still  a  relic.  I  now  in  hours  of  fatigue  pound  the 
piano  and  dreamily  imagine  dazed  and  enchanted  audiences.  Then 
came  oratory,  and  I  glowed  and  thrilled  in  declaiming  Webster's 
"Reply  to  Hayne,"  "Thanatopsis,"  Byron's  "Darkness,"  Patrick 
Henry,  and  best  of  all  "  The  Maniac,"  which  I  spouted  in  a  fervid  way 
wearing  a  flaming  red  necktie.  I  remember  a  fervid  scene  with  myself 
on  a  high  solitary  hill  with  a  bald  summit  two  miles  from  home,  where 

1  Horace  Bushnell,  Preacher  and  Theologian.  By  Theodore  F. 
Hunger.     Houghton,  Mifflin  and  Co.,  Boston,  1899. 

194 


BIOGRAPHIES   OF  YOUTH 

I  once  went  because  T  had  been  blamed.  I  tried  to  sum  myself  up, 
inventory  my  good  and  bad  points.  It  was  Sunday,  and  I  was  keyed 
up  to  a  frenzy  of  resolve,  prayer,  idealization  of  life;  all  grew  all  in  a 
jumble.  My  resolve  to  go  to  college  was  clinched  then  and  there,  and 
that  hill  will  always  remain  my  Pisgah  and  Moriah,  Horeb  and  Sinai 
all  in  one.  I  paced  back  and  forth  in  the  wind  and  shouted,  '  I  will 
make  people  know  and  revere  me ;  I  will  do  something ' ;  and  called 
every^thing  to  witness  my  vow  that  I  never  again  would  visit  this 
spot  till  all  was  fulfilled."  ''  Alas! "  he  says,  "  I  have  never  been  there 
since.  Once,  to  a  summer  party  who  went,  I  made  excuse  for  not 
keeping  this  rendezvous.  It  was  too  sacramental.  Certainly  it  was 
a  very  deep  and  never-to-be-forgotten  experience  there  all  alone, 
when  something  of  great  moment  to  me  certainly  took  place  in  my 
soul." 

In  the  biography  of  Frederick  Douglass  ^  we  are  told  that  when 
he  was  about  thirteen  he  began  to  feel  deeply  the  moral  yoke  of 
slaver}^  and  to  seek  means  of  escaping  it.  He  became  interested  in 
religion,  was  converted,  and  dreamed  of  and  prayed  for  liberty. 
With  great  ingenuity  he  extracted  knowledge  of  the  alphabet  and 
reading  from  white  boys  of  his  acquaintance.  At  sixteen,  under  a 
brutal  master  he  revolted  and  was  beaten  until  he  was  faint  from  loss 
of  blood,  and  at  seventeen  he  fought  and  whipped  the  brutal  over- 
seer Covey,  who  would  have  invoked  the  law,  which  made  death  the 
punishment  for  such  an  offense,  but  for  shame  of  having  been  worsted 
by  a  negro  boy  and  from  the  reflection  that  there  was  no  profit  from 
a  dead  slave.  Only  at  twenty  did  he  escape  into  the  new  world  of 
freedom. 

Jacob  Riis  ^  "fell  head  over  heels  in  love  with  sweet  Elizabeth" 
when  he  was  fifteen  and  she  thirteen.  His  "  courtship  proceeded  at  a 
tumultuous  pace,  which  first  made  the  town  laugh,  then  put  it  out  of 
patience  and  made  some  staid  matrons  express  the  desire  to  box  my 
ears  soundly."  She  played  among  the  lumber  where  he  worked,  and 
he  watched  her  so  intently  that  he  scarred  his  shinbone  with  an 
adze  he  should  have  been  minding.  He  cut  off  his  forefinger  with  an 
ax  when  she  was  dancing  on  a  beam  near  by,  and  once  fell  off  a  roof 
when  craning  his  neck  to  see  her  go  round  a  corner.  At  another 
time  he  ordered  her  father  off  the  dance-floor,  because  he  tried  to  take 

1  By  C.  W.  Chesnutt.  (Beacon  Biographies.)  Small,  Maynard  and 
Co.,  Boston,  1899. 

2  The  Making  of  an  American.     Macmillan,  1901. 

195 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

his  daughter  home  a  few  minutes  before  the  appointed  hour  of  mid- 
night. Young  as  he  was,  he  was  large  and  tried  to  run  away  to  join 
the  army,  but  finally  went  to  Copenhagen  to  serve  his  apprenticeship 
with  a  builder,  and  here  had  an  interview  with  Hans  Christian  Ander- 


Ellery  Sedgwick  tells  us  that  at  thirteen  the  mind  of  Thomas 
Paine  ran  on  stories  of  the  sea  which  his  teacher  had  told  him,  and 
that  he  attempted  to  enlist  on  the  privateer  Terrible.  He  was  restless 
at  home  for  years,  and  shipped  on  a  trading  vessel  at  nineteen. 

Indeed,  modern  literature  in  our  tongue  abounds  in  this  element, 
from  "Childe  Harold"  to  the  second  and  third  long  chapters  in  Mrs. 
Ward's  "David  Grieve,"  ending  with  his  engagement  to  Lucy 
Purcell;  Thackeray's  Arthur  Pendennis  and  his  characteristic  love  of 
the  far  older  and  scheming  Fanny  Fotheringay ;  David  in  James  Lane 
Allen's  ''Reign  of  Lav\^,"  who  read  Darwin,  was  expelled  from  the  Bible 
College  and  the  church,  and  finally  was  engaged  to  Gabriella ;  and 
scores  more  might  be  enumerated.  There  is  even  Sonny,*  who,  rude 
as  he  was  and  poorly  as  he  did  in  all  his  studies,  at  the  same  age  when 
he  began  to  keep  company,  ''tallered"  his  hair,  tied  a  bow  of  ribbon 
to  the  buggy  whip,  and  grew  interested  in  manners,  passing  things, 
putting  on  his  coat  and  taking  off  his  hat  at  table,  began  to  study  his 
menagerie  of  pet  snakes,  toads,  lizards,  wrote  John  Burroughs,  helped 
him  and  got  help  in  return,  took  to  observing,  and  finally  wrote  a 
book  about  the  forest  and  its  occupants,  all  of  which  is  very  hien 
trouve  if  not  historic  truth. 

Two  singular  reflections  always  rearise  in  reading 
Goethe's  autobiographical  writings:  first,  that  both  the 
age  and  the  place,  with  its  ceremonies,  festivals,  great 
pomp  and  stirring  events  in  close  quarters  in  the  little 
province  where  he  lived,  were  especially  adapted  to 
educate  children  and  absorb  them  in  externals;  and, 
second,  that  this  wonderful  boy  had  an  extreme  propen- 
sity for  moralizing  and  drawing  lessons  of  practical 
service  from  all  about  him.  This  is  no  less  manifest 
in  Wilhelm  ]\Ieister's  Apprenticeship  and  Travels,  which 


1  Sonny.     By  Ruth  McEnery  Stuart.     The  Century  Co.,  New  York, 
1896. 

196 


BIOGRAPHIES    OF   YOUTH 

supplements  the  autobiography.  Both  together  present 
.  a  very  unique  type  of  adolescence,  the  elaborate  story 
of  which  defies  epitome.  From  the  puppet  craze  well 
on  into  his  precocious  university  life  it  was  his  passion 
to  explore  the  widest  ranges  of  experience  and  then  to 
reflect,  moralize,  or  poetize  upon  them.  Perhaps  no 
one  ever  studied  the  nascent  stages  of  his  own  life  and 
elaborated  their  every  incident  with  such  careful  ob- 
servation and  analysis.  His  peculiar  diathesis  enabled 
him  to  conserve  their  freshness  on  to  full  maturity, 
when  he  gave  them  literary  form.  ]\Iost  lack  power  to 
fully  utilize  their  own  experience  even  for  practical  self- 
knowledge  and  guidance,  but  with  Goethe  nothing  was 
wasted  from  which  self-culture  could  be  extracted. 

Goethe's  first  impression  of  female  loveliness  was  of  a  girl  named 
Gretchen,  who  served  wine  one  evening,  and  whose  face  and  form  fol- 
lowed him  for  a  long  time.  Their  meetings  always  gave  him  a  thrill 
of  pleasure,  and  though  his  love  was  like  many  first  loves,  very  spirit- 
ual and  awakened  by  goodness  and  beauty,  it  gave  a  new  brightness 
to  the  whole  world,  and  to  be  near  hsr  seemed  to  him  an  indispensa- 
ble condition  of  his  being.  Her  fiance  was  generally  with  her,  and 
Goethe  experienced  a  shock  in  finding  that  she  had  become  a  milliner's 
assistant,  for  although,  like  all  natural  boys  of  aristocratic  families, 
he  loved  common  people,  this  interest  was  not  favored  by  his  parents. 
The  night  following  the  coronation  day  several  were  compelled  to 
spend  in  chairs,  and  he  and  his  Gretchen,  with  others,  slept,  she  with 
her  head  upon  his  shoulder,  until  all  the  others  had  awakened  in  the 
morning.  At  last  they  parted  at  her  door,  and  for  the  first  and  last 
time  they  kissed  but  never  met  again,  although  he  often  wept  in 
thinking  of  her.  He  was  terribly  affronted  to  fully  realize  that, 
although  only  two  years  older  than  himself,  she  should  have  re- 
garded him  as  a  child.  He  tried  to  strip  her  of  all  loving  qualities 
and  think  her  odious,  but  her  image  hovered  over  him.  The  sanity 
of  instinct  innate  in  youth  prompted  him  to  lay  aside  as  childish  the 
foolish  habit  of  weeping  and  railing,  and  his  mortification  that  she 
regarded  him  somewhat  as  a  nurse  might,  gradually  helped  to  work 
his  cure. 

He  was  very  fond  of  his  own  name,  and,  like  young  and  un- 

197 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

educated  people,  wrote  or  carved  it  anywhere;  later  placed  near  it 
that  of  a  new  love,  Annette,  and  afterward  on  finding  the  tree  he  shed 
tears,  melted  toward  her,  and  made  an  idyl.  He  was  also  seized 
with  a  passion  of  teasing  her  and  dominating  over  her  devotedness 
with  wanton  and  tyrannical  caprice,  venting  upon  her  the  ill  humor 
of  his  disappointments,  and  grew  absurdly  jealous  and  lost  her  after 
she  had  borne  with  him  with  incredible  patience  and  after  terrible 
scenes  with  her  by  which  he  gained  nothing.  Frenzied  by  his  loss, 
he  began  to  abuse  his  physical  nature  and  was  only  saved  from  illness 
by  the  healing  power  of  his  poetic  talent;  the  "  Lover's  Caprice"  was 
written  with  the  impetus  of  a  boiling  passion.  In  the  midst  of  many 
serious  events,  a  reckless  humor,  which  was  due  to  excess  of  life, 
developed  which  made  him  feel  himself  superior  to  the  moment,  and 
even  to  court  danger.  He  played  tricks,  although  rarely  with  pre- 
meditation. Later  he  mused  much  upon  the  transient  nature  of  love 
and  the  mutability  of  character;  the  extent  to  which  the  senses  could 
be  indulged  within  the  bounds  of  morality;  he  sought  to  rid  himself 
of  all  that  troubled  him  by  writing  song  or  epigram  about  it,  which 
made  him  seem  frivolous  and  prompted  one  friend  to  seek  to  subdue 
him  by  means  of  church  forms,  which  he  had  severed  on  coming  to 
Leipzig.  By  degrees  he  felt  an  epoch  approaching  when  all  respect 
for  authority  was  to  vanish,  and  he  became  suspicious  and  even 
despairing  with  regard  to  the  best  individuals  he  had  known  before 
and  grew  chummy  with  a  young  tutor  whose  jokes  and  fooleries  were 
incessant.  His  disposition  fluctuated  between  gaiety  and  melancholy, 
and  Rousseau  attracted  him.  Meanwhile  his  health  declined  until  a 
long  illness,  which  began  with  a  hemorrhage,  caused  him  to  oscillate 
for  days  between  life  and  death;  and  convalescence,  generally  so  de- 
lightful, was  marred  by  a  serious  tumor.  His  father's  disposition 
was  stern,  and  he  could  become  passionate  and  bitter,  and  his  mother's 
domesticity  made  her  turn  to  religion,  so  that  on  coming  home  he 
formed  the  acquaintance  of  a  religious  circle.  Again  Goethe  was 
told  by  a  hostile  child  that  he  was  not  the  true  son  of  his  father. 
This  inoculated  him  with  a  disease  that  long  lurked  in  his  system  and 
prompted  various  indirect  investigations  to  get  at  the  truth,  during 
which  he  compared  all  distinguished  guests  with  his  own  physiog- 
nomy to  detect  his  own  likeness. 

Up  to  the  Leipzig  period  he  had  great  joy  in  wandering  unknown, 
unconscious  of  self;  but  he  soon  began  to  torment  himself  with  an  al- 
most hypertrophied  fancy  that  he  was  attracting  much  attention, 
that  others'  eyes  were  turned  on  his  person  to  fix  it  in  their  memories, 
that  he  was  scanned  and  found  fault  with;  and  hence  he  developed  a 
love  of  the  country,  of  the  woods  and  solitary  places,  where  he  could 

198 


BIOGRAPHIES   OF  YOUTH 

be  hedged  in  and  separated  from  all  the  world.  Here  he  began  to 
throw  off  his  former  habit  of  looking  at  things  from  the  art  stand- 
point and  to  take  pleasure  in  natural  objects  for  their  own  sake. 
His  mother  had  almost  grown  up  to  consciousness  in  her  two  oldest 
children,  and  his  first  disappointment  in  love  turned  his  thought  all 
the  more  affectionately  toward  her  and  his  sister,  a  year  younger. 
He  was  long  consumed  with  amazement  over  the  newly  awakening 
sense  impulse  that  took  intellectual  forms  and  the  mental  needs  that 
clothed  themselves  in  sense  images.  He  fell  to  building  air  castles  of 
opposition  lecture  courses  and  gave  himself  up  to  many  dreams  of 
ideal  university  conditions.  He  first  attended  lectures  diligently, 
but  suffered  much  harm  from  being  too  advanced;  learned  a  great 
deal  that  he  could  not  regulate,  and  was  thereby  made  uncomfortable ; 
grew  interested  in  the  fit  of  his  clothes,  of  which  hitherto  he  had 
been  careless.  He  was  in  despair  at  the  uncertainty  of  his  own  taste 
and  judgment,  and  almost  feared  he  must  make  a  complete  change 
of  mind,  renouncing  what  he  had  hitherto  learned,  and  so  one  day 
in  great  contempt  for  his  past  burned  up  his  poetry,  sketches,  etc. 
He  had  learned  to  value  and  love  the  Bible,  and  owed  his  moral 
culture  to  it.  Its  events  and  symbols  were  deeply  stamped  upon 
him,  so  without  being  a  pietist  he  was  greatly  moved  at  the  scofRng 
spirit  toward  it  which  he  met  at  the  university.  From  youth  he 
had  stood  on  good  terms  with  God,  and  at  times  he  had  felt  that  he 
had  some  things  to  forgive  God  for  not  having  given  better  assist- 
ance to  his  infinite  good-will.  Under  all  this  influence  he  turned  to 
cabalism  and  became  interested  in  crystals  and  the  microcosm  and 
macrocosm,  and  fell  into  the  habit  of  despair  over  what  he  had 
been  and  believed  just  before.  He  conceived  a  kind  of  hermetical 
or  neoplatonic  godhead  creating  in  more  and  more  eccentric  circles, 
until  the  last,  which  rose  in  contradiction,  was  Lucifer  to  whom 
creation  was  committed.  He  first  of  all  imagined  in  detail  an 
angelic  host,  and  finally  a  whole  theology  was  wrought  out  in  petto. 
He  used  a  gilt  ornamented  music-stand  as  a  kind  of  altar  with 
fumigating  pastils  for  incense,  where  each  morning  God  was  ap- 
proached by  offerings  until  one  day  a  conflagration  put  a  sudden 
end  to  these  celebrations. 

Hans  Andersen,^  the  son  of  a  poor  shoemaker,  taught  in  a  charity 
school  at  the  dawn  of  puberty;  vividly  animated  Bible  stories  from 
pictures  painted  on  the  wall;  was  dreamy  and  absent-minded;  told 

1  The  Story  of  My  Life.  Works,  vol.  8  new  edition.  Houghton,  Mifflin 
and  Co.,  Boston,  1894. 

14  199 


YOUTH  :  ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

continued  stories  to  his  mates;  at  confirmation  vowed  he  would  be 
famous;  and  finally,  at  fourteen,  left  home  for  Copenhagen,  where  he 
was  violently  stage-struck  and  worked  his  way  from  friendship  with 
the  bill-poster  to  the  stage  as  page,  shepherd,  etc.;  called  on  a  famous 
dancer,  who  scorned  him,  and  then,  feeling  that  he  had  no  one  but 
God  to  depend  on,  prayed  earnestly  and  often.  For  nearly  a  year, 
until  his  voice  broke,  he  was  a  fine  singer.  He  wet  with  his  tears  the 
eyes  of  a  portrait  of  a  heartless  man  that  he  might  feel  for  him. 
He  played  with  a  puppet  theater  and  took  a  childish  delight  in  deck- 
ing the  characters  with  gay  remnants  that  he  begged  from  shops; 
wrote  several  plays  which  no  one  would  accept;  stole  into  an  empty 
theater  one  New  Year's  day  to  pray  aloud  on  the  middle  of  the  stage; 
shouted  with  joy;  hugged  and  kissed  a  beech-tree  till  people  thought 
him  insane;  abhorred  the  thought  of  apprenticeship  to  Latin  as  he 
did  to  that  of  a  trade,  which  was  a  constant  danger;  and  was  one  of 
the  most  dreamy  and  sentimental,  and  by  spells  religious  and  prayer- 
ful, of  youth. 

George  Ebers  ^  remembered  as  a  boy  of  eleven  the  revolution  of 
'48  in  Berlin,  soon  after  which  he  was  placed  in  Froebel's  school  at 
Keilhau.  This  great  teacher  with  his  noble  associates,  Middendorf, 
Barop,  and  Langekhal,  lived  with  the  boys;  told  the  stirring  stories 
of  their  own  lives  as  soldiers  in  the  war  of  liberation ;  led  their  pupils 
on  long  excursions  in  vacation,  often  lasting  for  months,  and  gave 
much  liberty  to  the  boys,  who  were  allowed  to  haze  not  only  their 
new  mates,  but  new  teachers.  This  transfer  from  the  city  to  the 
country  roused  a  veritable  passion  in  the  boy,  who  remained  here  till 
he  was  fifteen.  Trees  and  cliffs  were  climbed,  collections  made,  the 
Saale  by  moonlight  and  the  lofty  Steiger  at  sunset  were  explored. 
There  were  swimming  and  skating  and  games,  and  the  maxim  of  the 
school,  "  Friede,  Freude,  Freiheit,"  ^  was  lived  up  to.  The  boys  hung 
on  their  teachers  for  stories.  The  teachers  took  their  boys  into  their 
confidence  for  all  their  own  literary  aims,  loves,  and  ideals.  One  had 
seen  the  corpse  of  Korner  and  another  knew  Prohaska.  "The 
Roman  postulate  that  knowledge  should  be  imparted  to  boys  ac- 
cording to  a  thoroughly  tested  method  approved  by  the  mature 
human  intellect  and  which  seems  most  useful  to  it  for  later  life"  was 
the  old  system  of  sacrificing  the  interests  of  the  child  for  those  of  the 
man.     Here  childhood  was  to  live  itself  out  completely  and  naturally 

1  The  Story  of  My  Life.  Translated  by  M.  J.  Safford.  D.  Appleton 
and  Co.,  New  York,  1893. 

2  Peace,  joy,  freedom. 

200 


BIOGRAPHIES   OF   YOUTH 

into  an  ever-renewed  paradise.  The  temperaments,  dispositions, 
and  characters  of  each  of  the  sixty  boys  were  carefully  studied  and 
recorded.  Some  of  these  are  still  little  masterpieces  of  psychological 
penetration,  and  this  was  made  the  basis  of  development.  The  ex- 
treme Teutonism  cultivated  by  wrestling,  shooting,  and  fencing, 
giving  each  a  spot  of  land  to  sow,  reap,  and  shovel,  and  all  in  an 
atmosphere  of  adult  life,  made  an  environment  that  fitted  the  transi- 
tion period  as  well  as  any  that  the  history  of  education  affords. 
Every  tramp  and  battle  were  described  in  a  book  by  each  boy.  When 
at  fifteen  Ebers  was  transferred  to  the  Kottbus  Gymnasium,  he  felt 
like  a  colt  led  from  green  pastures  to  the  stable,  and  the  period  of 
effervescence  made  him  almost  possessed  by  a  demon,  so  many  sorts 
of  follies  did  he  commit.  He  wrote  "a  poem  of  the  world,"  fell  in 
love  with  an  actress  older  than  himself,  became  kno^vm  as  foolhardy 
for  his  wild  escapades,  and  only  slowly  sobered  down. 

In  Gottfried  Keller's  "  Der  grline  Heinrich,"  ^  the  author,  whom 
R.  M.  Meyer  calls  "  the  most  eminent  literary  German  of  the  nineteenth 
century,"  reviews  the  memories  of  his  early  life.  This  autobiography 
is  a  plain  and  very  realistic  stoiy  of  a  normal  child,  and  not  adulter- 
ated with  fiction  like  Goethe's  or  with  psychoses  like  Rousseau  or 
Bashkirtseff.  He  seems  a  boy  like  all  other  boys,  and  his  childhood 
and  youth  were  in  no  wise  extraordinary.  The  first  part  of  this  work, 
which  describes  his  youth  up  to  the  age  of  eighteen,  is  the  most  im- 
portant, and  everything  is  given  with  remarkable  fidelity  and  minute- 
ness. It  is  a  tale  of  little  things.  All  the  friendships  and  loves  and 
impulses  are  there,  and  he  is  fundamentally  selfish  and  utilitarian; 
God  and  nature  were  one,  and  only  when  his  beloved  Anna  died  did 
he  wish  to  believe  in  immortality.  He,  too,  as  a  child,  found  two 
kinds  of  love  in  his  heart — the  ideal  and  the  sensual,  very  independent 
— the  one  for  a  young  and  innocent  girl  and  the  other  for  a  superb 
young  woman  years  older  than  he,  pure,  although  the  personification 
of  sense.  He  gives  a  rich  harvest  of  minute  and  sagacious  observa- 
tions about  his  strange  simultaneous  loves;  the  peculiar  tastes  of  food; 
his  day-dream  period;  and  his  rather  prolonged  habit  of  lying,  the 
latter  because  he  had  no  other  vent  for  invention.  He  describes  with 
great  regret  his  leaving  school  at  so  early  an  age ;  his  volcanic  passion 
of  anger;  his  self-distrust;  his  periods  of  abandon;  his  passion  to  make 
a  success  of  art  though  he  did  not  of  life;  his  spells  of  self-despair  and 
cynicism;  his  periods  of  desolation  in  his  single  life;  his  habit  of  story- 


Gesammelte  Werke.     Vierter  Band.     Wilhelm  Hertz,  Berlin,  1897. 

201 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

telling;  his  wrestling  with  the  problem  of  theology  and  God;  the  con- 
flict between  his  philosophy  and  his  love  of  the  girls,  etc. 

From  a  private  school  in  Leipzig,  where  he  had  shown  all  a  boy's 
tact  in  finding  what  his  masters  thought  the  value  of  each  subject  they 
taught;  where  he  had  joined  in  the  vandalism  of  using  a  battering- 
ram  to  break  a  way  to  the  hated  science  apparatus  and  to  destroy  it ; 
feeling  that  the  classical  writers  were  overpraised;  and  where  at  the 
age  of  sixteen  he  had  appeared  several  times  in  public  as  a  reciter  of 
his  own  poems,  Max  Midler  returned  to  Leipzig  and  entered  upon  the 
freedom  of  university  life  there  at  the  age  of  seventeen.  For  years 
his  chief  enjoyment  was  music,  i  He  played  the  piano  well,  heard 
everything  he  could  in  concert  or  opera,  was  an  oratorio  tenor,  and 
grew  more  and  more  absorbed  in  music,  so  that  he  planned  to  devote 
himself  altogether  to  it  and  also  to  enter  a  musical  school  at  Dessau, 
but  nothing  came  of  it.  At  the  university  he  saw  little  of  society, 
was  once  incarcerated  for  wearing  a  club  ribbon,  and  confesses  that 
with  his  boon  companions  he  was  guilty  of  practises  which  would 
now  bring  culprits  into  collision  with  authorities.  He  fought  three 
duels,  participated  in  many  pranks  and  freakish  escapades,  but  never- 
theless attended  fifty-three  different  courses  of  lectures  in  three  years. 
When  Hegelism  was  the  state  philosophy,  he  tried  hard  to  under- 
stand it,  but  dismissed  it  with  the  sentiments  expressed  by  a  French 
officer  to  his  tailor,  who  refused  to  take  the  trousers  he  had  ordered 
to  be  made  very  tight  because  they  did  not  fit  so  closely  that  he  could 
not  get  into  them.  Darwin  attracted  him,  yet  the  wildness  of  his 
followers  repelled.  He  says,  "I  confess  I  felt  quite  bewildered  for  a 
time  and  began  to  despair  altogether  of  my  reasoning  powers."  He 
wonders  how  young  minds  in  German  universities  survive  the  storms 
and  fogs  through  which  they  pass.  With  bated  breath  he  heard  his 
elders  talk  of  philosophy  and  tried  to  lay  hold  of  a  word  here  and 
there,  but  it  all  floated  before  his  mind  like  mist.  Later  he  had  an 
Hegelian  period,  but  found  in  Herbart  a  corrective,  and  at  last 
decided  upon  Sanskrit  and  other  ancient  languages,  because  he  felt 
that  he  must  know  something  that  no  other  knew,  and  also  that  the 
Germans  had  then  heard  only  the  after-chime  and  not  the  real 
striking  of  the  bells  of  Indian  philosophy.  From  twenty  his  struggles 
and  his  queries  grew  more  definite,  and  at  last,  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
two,  he  was  fully  launched  upon  his  career  in  Paris,  and  later  went  to 
Oxford. 

1  My  Autobiography,  p.  106.  Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  New  York, 
1901. 

202 


BIOGRAPHIES   OF  YOUTH 

At  thirteen  Wagner^  translated  about  half  the  "Odyssey"  vol- 
untarily; at  fourteen  began  the  tragedy  which  was  to  combine  the 
grandeur  of  two  of  Shakespeare's  dramas;  at  sixteen  he  tried  "his 
new-fledged  musical  wings  by  soaring  at  once  to  the  highest  peaks  of 
orchestral  achievement  without  wasting  any  time  on  the  humble 
foot-hills."  He  sought  to  make  a  new  departure,  and,  compared  to 
the  grandeur  of  his  own  composition,  "  Beethoven's  Ninth  Symphony 
appeared  like  a  simple  Pleyel  Sonata."  To  facilitate  the  reading  of 
his  astounding  score,  he  wrote  it  in  three  kinds  of  ink — red  for  strings, 
green  for  the  wood-wind,  and  black  for  the  brass  instruments.  He 
writes  that  this  overture  was  the  climax  of  his  absurdities,  and 
although  the  audience  before  which  an  accommodating  orchestra 
played  it  were  disgusted  and  the  musicians  were  convulsed  with 
laughter,  it  made  a  deep  impression  upon  the  author's  mind.  Even 
after  matriculating  at  the  university  he  abandoned  himself  so  long  to 
the  dissipations  common  to  student  life  before  the  reaction  came  that 
liis  relatives  feared  that  he  was  a  good-for-nothing. 

In  his  "  Hannele,"  Hauptmann,  the  dramatist,  describes  in  a  kind 
of  dream  poem  what  he  supposed  to  pass  through  the  mind  of  a  dying 
girl  of  thirteen  or  fourteen,  who  does  not  wish  to  live  and  is  so  ab- 
sorbed by  the  "  Brownies  of  her  brain"  that  she  hardly  knows  whether 
she  is  alive  on  earth  or  dead  in  heaven,  and  who  sees  the  Lord  Jesus  in 
the  form  of  the  schoolmaster  whom  she  adores.  In  her  closing  vision 
there  is  a  symbolic  representation  of  her  own  resurrection.  To  the 
passionate  discussions  in  Germany,  England,  and  France,  as  to 
whether  this  character  is  true  to  adolescence,  we  can  only  answer 
with  an  emphatic  affirmative;  that  her  heaven  abounds  in  local 
color  and  in  fairy-tale  items,  that  it  is  very  material,  and  that  she  is 
troubled  by  fears  of  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost,  is  answer  enough  in 
an  ill-used,  star^dng  child  with  a  fevered  brain,  whose  dead  mother 
taught  her  these  things. 

Saint-Pierre's  "  Paul  and  Virginia  "  is  an  attempt 
to  describe  budding  adolescence  in  a  boy  and  girl  born 
on  a  remote  island  and  reared  in  a  state  of  natural  sim- 
plicity. The  descriptions  are  sentimental  after  the  fash- 
ion of  the  age  in  France,  and  the  pathos,  which  to  us 
smacks  of  affectation  and  artificiality,  nevertheless  has 
a  vein  of  truth  in  it.     The  story  really  begins  when  the 

1  Wagner  and  His  Works.  By  Henry  T.  Finck.  Chas.  Scribner's 
Sons,  New  York,  1893. 

203 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

two  children  were  twelve;  and  the  description  of  the 
dawn  of  love  and  melancholy  in  Virginia's  heart,  for 
some  time  concealed  from  Paul,  of  her  disquiet  and 
piety,  of  the  final  frank  avowal  of  eternal  love  by  each, 
set  off  by  the  pathetic  separation,  and  of  the  undying 
love,  and  finally  the  tragic  death  and  burial  of  each — 
all  this  owes  its  charm,  for  its  many  generations  of 
readers,  to  its  merits  as  an  essentially  true  picture  of 
the  human  heart  at  this  critical  age.  This  work  and 
Rousseau  ^  have  contributed  to  give  French  literature 
its  peculiar  cast  in  its  description  of  this  age. 

"  The  first  explosions  of  a  combustible  constitution"  in  Rous- 
seau's precocious  nature  were  troublesome,  and  he  felt  premature 
sensations  of  erotic  voluptuousness,  but  without  any  sin.  He  longed 
"to  fall  at  the  feet  of  an  imperious  mistress,  obey  her  mandates  or 
implore  pardon."  He  only  wanted  a  lady,  to  become  a  knight  errant. 
At  ten  he  was  passionately  devoted  to  a  Mile.  Vulson,  whom  he 
publicly  and  tyrannically  claimed  as  his  own  and  would  allow  no 
other  to  approach.  He  had  very  different  sensuous  feelings  toward 
Mile.  Goton,  with  whom  his  relations  were  very  passionate,  though 
pure.  Absolutely  under  the  power  of  both  these  mistresses,  the 
effects  they  produced  upon  him  were  in  no  wise  related  to  each  other. 
The  former  was  a  brother's  affection  with  the  jealousy  of  a  lover 
added,  but  the  latter  a  furious,  tigerish,  Turkish  rage.  When  told 
of  the  former's  marriage,  in  his  indignation  and  heroic  fury  he  swore 
never  more  to  see  a  perfidious  girl.  A  slightlj''  neurotic  vein  of  pro- 
longed ephebeitis  pervades  much  of  his  life. 

Pierre  Loti's  "  Story  of  a  Child  "^  was  written  when  the  author  was 
forty-two,  and  contains  hardly  a  fact,  but  it  is  one  of  the  best  of  inner 
autobiographies,  and  is  nowhere  richer  than  in  the  last  chapters,  which 
bring  the  author  down  to  the  age  of  fourteen  and  a  half.  He  vividly 
describes  the  new  joy  at  waking,  which  he  began  to  feel  at  twelve  or 
thirteen;  the  clear  vision  into  the  bottomless  pit  of  death;  the  new, 
marvelous  susceptibility  to  nature  as  comradeship  with  boys  of  his 

1  Les  Confessions.  CRuvres  Completes,  vols.  8  and  9.  Hachette  et 
Cie.,  Paris,  1903. 

2  Translated  from  the  French  by  C.  F.  Smith.  C.  C.  Birchard  and  Co., 
Boston,  1901. 

204 


BIOGRAPHIES   OF  YOUTH 

own  age  was  lacking;  the  sudden  desires  from  pure  bravado  and 
perversity  to  do  something  unseemly,  e.  g.,  making  a  fly  omelet  and 
carrying  it  in  a  procession  with  song;  the  melting  of  pewter  plates  and 
pouring  them  into  water  and  salting  a  wild  tract  of  land  with  them; 
organizing  a  band  of  miners,  whom  he  led  as  if  with  keen  scent  to  the 
right  spot  and  rediscovered  his  nuggets,  everything  being  done 
mysteriously  and  as  a  tribal  secret.  Loti  had  a  new  feeling  for  the 
haunting  music  of  Chopin,  which  he  had  been  taught  to  play  but  had 
not  been  interested  in;  his  mind  was  inflamed,  by  a  home  visit  of  an 
elder  brother,  with  the  idea  of  going  to  the  South  Sea  Islands,  and 
this  became  a  long  obsession  which  finally  led  him  to  enlist  in  the 
navy,  dropping,  with  a  beating  heart,  the  momentous  letter  into  the 
post-office  after  long  misgivings  and  delays.  He  had  a  superficial 
and  a  hidden  self,  the  latter  somewhat  whimsical  and  perhaps  ridic- 
ulous, shared  only  with  a  few  intimate  friends  for  whom  he  would 
have  let  himself  be  cut  into  bits.  He  believes  his  transition  period 
lasted  longer  than  with  the  majority  of  men,  and  during  it  he  was 
carried  from  one  extreme  to  another;  had  rather  eccentric  and 
absurd  manners,  and  touched  most  of  the  perilous  rocks  on  the 
voyage  of  life.  He  had  an  early  love  for  an  older  girl  whose  name  he 
wrote  in  cipher  on  his  books,  although  he  felt  it  a  little  artificial,  but 
believed  it  might  have  developed  into  a  great  and  true  hereditary- 
friendship,  continuing  that  which  their  ancestors  had  felt  for  many 
generations.  The  birth  of  love  in  his  heart  was  in  a  dream  after 
having  read  the  forbidden  poet,  Alfred  de  Musset.  He  was  fourteen, 
and  in  his  dream  it  was  a  soft,  odorous  twilight.  He  walked  amid 
flowers  seeking  a  nameless  some  one  whom  he  ardently  desired,  and 
felt  that  something  strange  and  wonderful,  intoxicating  as  it  ad- 
vanced, was  going  to  happen.  The  twilight  grew  deeper,  and  behind 
a  rose-bush  he  saw  a  young  girl  with  a  languorous  and  mysterious 
smile,  although  her  forehead  and  eyes  were  hidden.  As  it  darkened 
rather  suddenly,  her  eyes  came  out,  and  they  were  very  personal  and 
seemed  to  belong  to  some  one  already  much  beloved,  who  had  been 
found  with  ''transports  of  infinite  joy  and  tenderness."  He  woke 
with  a  start  and  sought  to  retain  the  phantom,  which  faded.  He 
could  not  conceive  that  she  was  a  mere  illusion,  and  as  he  realized 
that  she  had  vanished  he  felt  overwhelmed  with  hopelessness.  It 
was  the  first  stirring  "of  true  love  with  all  its  great  melancholy  and 
deep  mystery,  with  its  overwhelming  but  sad  enchantment — love 
which  like  a  perfume  endows  with  a  fragrance  all  it  touches." 

It   is,   I   believe,  high  time  that   ephebic   literature 
should  be  recognized  as  a  class  by  itself,   and  have  a 

205 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

place  of  its  own  in  the  history  of  letters  and  in  criti- 
cism. Much  of  it  should  be  individually  prescribed  for 
the  reading  of  the  young,  for  whom  it  has  a  singular  zest 
and  is  a  true  stimulus  and  corrective.  This  stage  of  life 
now  has  what  might  almost  be  called  a  school  of  its 
own.  Here  the  young  appeal  to  and  listen  to  each  other 
as  they  do  not  to  adults,  and  in  a  way  the  latter  have 
failed  to  appreciate.  Again,  no  biography,  and  espe- 
cially no  autobiography,  should  henceforth  be  com- 
plete if  it  does  not  describe  this  period  of  transforma- 
tion so  all-determining  for  future  life  to  which  it  alone 
can  often  give  the  key.  Rightly  to  draw  the  lessons 
of  this  age  not  only  saves  us  from  waste  ineffable  of 
this  rich  but  crude  area  of  experience,  but  makes  matu- 
rity saner  and  more  complete.  Lastly,  many  if  not 
most  young  people  should  be  encouraged  to  enough  of 
the  confessional  private  journalism  to  teach  them  self- 
knowledge,  for  the  art  of  self-expression  usually  begins 
now  if  ever,  when  it  has  a  wealth  of  subjective  material 
and  needs  forms  of  expression  peculiar  to  itself. 

For    additional    references    on   the   subject    of    this 
chapter,  see: 

Alcafarado,  Marianna,  Love  Letters  of  a  Portuguese  Nun.  Trans- 
lated by  R.  H.,  New  York,  1887.  Richardson,  Abby  Sage,  Abelard 
and  Heloise,  and  Letters  of  Heloise,  Houghton,  Mifflin  and  Co.,  Bos- 
ton. Smith,  Theodote  L.,  Types  of  Adolescent  Affection.  Peda- 
gogical Seminary,  June,  1904,  vol.  11,  pp.  178-203. 


206 


CHAPTER    IX 

THE   GROWTH   OF   SOCIAL   IDEALS 

Change  from  childish  to  adult  friends — Influence  of  favorite  teachers — 
What  children  wish  or  plan  to  do  or  be — Property  and  the  money 
sense — Social  judgments — The  only  child — First  social  organizations 
— Student  life — Associations  for  youth,  controlled  by  adults. 

In  a  few  aspects  we  are  already  able  to  trace  the 
normal  psychic  outgrowing  of  the  home  of  childhood  as 
its  interests  irradiate  into  an  ever  enlarging  environ- 
ment. Almost  the  only  duty  of  small  children  is 
habitual  and  prompt  obedience.  Our  very  presence 
enforces  one  general  law — that  of  keeping  our  good- 
will and  avoiding  our  displeasure.  They  respect  all  we 
smile  at  or  even  notice,  and  grow  to  it  like  the  plant 
toward  the  light.  Their  early  lies  are  often  saying  what 
they  think  will  please.  At  bottom,  the  most  restless  child 
admires  and  loves  those  who  save  him  from  too  great 
fluctuations  by  coercion,  provided  the  means  be  rightly 
chosen  and  the  ascendency  extend  over  heart  and  mind. 
But  the  time  comes  when  parents  are  often  shocked  at 
the  lack  of  respect  suddenly  sho^vn  by  the  child.  They 
have  ceased  to  be  the  highest  ideals.  The  period  of 
habituating  morality  and  making  it  habitual  is  ceasing; 
and  the  passion  to  realize  freedom,  to  act  on  personal 
experience,  and  to  keep  a  private  conscience  is  in  order. 
To  act  occasionally  with  independence  from  the  highest 
possible  ideal  motives  develops  the  impulse  and  the  joy 
of  pure  obligation,  and  thus  brings  some  new  and  origi- 

207 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

nal  force  into  the  world  and  makes  habitual  guidance 
by  the  highest  and  best,  or  by  inner  as  opposed  to  outer 
constraint,  the  practical  rule  of  life.  To  bring  the 
richest  streams  of  thought  to  bear  in  interpreting  the 
ethical  instincts,  so  that  the  youth  shall  cease  to  live 
in  a  moral  interregnum,  is  the  real  goal  of  self-knowl- 
edge. This  is  true  education  of  the  will  and  prepares 
the  way  for  love  of  overcoming  obstacles  of  difficulty, 
perhaps  even  of  conflict.  This  impulse  is  often  the 
secret  of  obstinacy.^  And  yet,  "  at  no  time  in  life  will 
a  human  being  respond  so  heartily  if  treated  by  older 
and  wiser  people  as  if  he  were  an  equal  or  even  a  su- 
perior. The  attempt  to  treat  a  child  at  adolescence  as 
you  would  treat  an  inferior  is  instantly  fatal  to  good 
discipline. ' '  ^  Parents  still  think  of  their  offspring  as 
mere  children,  and  tighten  the  rein  when  they  should 
loosen  it.  Many  young  people  feel  that  they  have  the 
best  of  homes  and  yet  that  they  will  go  crazy  if  they 
must  remain  in  them.  If  the  training  of  earlier  years 
has  been  good,  guidance  by  command  may  now  safely 
give  way  to  that  by  ideals,  which  are  sure  to  be  heroic. 
The  one  unpardonable  thing  for  the  adolescent  is  dul- 
ness,  stupidity,  lack  of  life,  interest,  and  enthusiasm 
in  school  or  teachers,  and,  perhaps  above  all,  too  great 
stringency.  Least  of  all,  at  this  stage,  can  the  curriculum 
or  school  be  an  ossuary.  The  child  must  now  be  taken 
into  the  family  councils  and  find  the  parents  interested 
in  all  that  interests  him.  Where  this  is  not  done,  we 
have  the  conditions  for  the  interesting  cases  of  so  many 
youth,  who  now  begin  to  suspect  that  father,  mother,  or 
both,  are  not  their  true  parents.    Not  only  is  there  in- 

1  Tarde:  L'Opposition  Universelle.     Alcan,  Paris,  1897,  p.  461. 

2  The  Adolescent  at  Home  and  in  School.     By  E.   G.   Lancaster. 
Proceedings  of  the  National  Educational  Association,  1899,  p.  1039. 

208 


THE   GROWTH   OF  SOCIAL   IDEALS 

terest  in  rapidly  widening  associations  with  coevals, 
but  a  new  lust  to  push  on  and  up  to  maturity.  One 
marked  trait  now  is  to  seek  friends  and  companions 
older  than  themselves,  or,  next  to  this,  to  seek  those 
younger.  This  is  in  marked  contrast  with  previous 
years,  when  they  seek  associates  of  their  own  age.  Pos- 
sibly the  merciless  teasing  instinct,  which  culminates 
at  about  the  same  time,  may  have  some  influence,  but 
certain  it  is  that  now  interest  is  transpolarized  up  and 
down  the  age  scale.  One  reason  is  the  new  hunger  for 
information,  not  only  concerning  reproduction,  but  a 
vast  variety  of  other  matters,  so  that  there  is  often  an 
attitude  of  silent  begging  for  knowledge.  In  answer 
to  Lancaster's^  questions  on  this  subject,  some  sought 
older  associates  because  they  could  learn  more  from 
them,  found  them  better  or  more  steadfast  friends, 
craved  sympathy  and  found  most  of  it  from  older  and 
perhaps  married  people.  Some  were  more  interested  in 
their  parents'  conversation  with  other  adults  than  with 
themselves,  and  were  particularly  entertained  by  the 
chance  of  hearing  things  they  had  no  business  to.  There 
is  often  a  feeling  that  adults  do  not  realize  this  new 
need  of  friendship  with  them  and  show  want  of  sym- 
pathy almost  brutal. 

Stableton,^  who  has  made  interesting  notes  on  individual  boys 
entering  the  adolescent  period,  emphasizes  the  importance  of 
sympathy,  appreciation,  and  respect  in  dealing  with  this  age.  They 
must  now  be  tallied  to  as  equals,  and  in  this  way  their  habits  of 
industry  and  even  their  dangerous  love  affairs  can  be  controlled. 


1  The  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of  Adolescence.  Pedagogical  Semi- 
nary, July,  1897,  vol.  5,  p.  87. 

2  Study  of  Boys  Entering  the  Adolescent  Period  of  Life.  North 
Western  Monthly,  November,  1897,  vol.  8,  pp.  248-250,  and  a  series 
thereafter. 

209 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

He  says,  "There  is  no  more  important  question  before  the  teaching 
fraternity  to-day  than  how  to  deal  justly  and  successfully  with  boys 
at  this  time  of  life.  This  is  the  age  when  they  drop  out  of  school"  in 
far  too  large  numbers,  and  he  thinks  that  the  small  percentage  of 
male  graduates  from  our  high  schools  is  due  to  "  the  inability  of  the 
average  grammar  grade  or  high-school  teacher  to  deal  rightly  with 
boys  in  this  critical  period  of  their  school  life."  Most  teachers 
"know  all  their  bad  points,  but  fail  to  discover  their  good  ones." 
The  fine  disciplinarian,  the  mechanical  movement  of  whose  school  is 
so  admirable  and  who  does  not  realize  the  new  need  of  liberty  or  how 
loose-jointed,  mentally  and  physically,  all  are  at  this  age,  should  be 
supplanted  by  one  who  can  look  into  the  heart  and  by  a  glance  make 
the  boy  feel  that  he  or  she  is  his  friend.  "The  weakest  work  in  our 
schools  is  the  handling  of  boys  entering  the  adolescent  period  of  life, 
and  there  is  no  greater  blessing  that  can  come  to  a  boy  at  this  age, 
when  he  does  not  understand  himself,  than  a  good  strong  teacher 
that  understands  him,  has  faith  in  him,  and  will  day  by  day  lead  him 
till  he  can  walk  alone." 

Small  ^  found  the  teacher  a  focus  of  imitation  whence  many  in- 
fluences, both  physical  and  mental,  irradiated  to  the  pupils.  Every 
accent,  gesture,  automatism,  like  and  dislike  is  caught  consciously 
and  unconsciously.  Every  intellectual  interest  in  the  teacher 
permeates  the  class — liars,  if  trusted,  become  honest;  those  treated  as 
ladies  and  gentlemen  act  so;  those  told  by  favorite  teachers  of  the 
good  things  they  are  capable  of  feel  a  strong  impulsion  to  do  them; 
some  older  children  are  almost  transformed  by  being  made  com- 
panions to  teachers,  by  having  their  good  traits  recognized,  and  by 
frank  apologies  by  the  teacher  when  in  error. 

An  interesting  and  unsuspected  illustration  of  the  growth  of  in- 
dependence with  adolescence  was  found  in  2,411  papers  from  the 
second  to  eighth  grades  on  the  characteristics  of  the  best  teacher  as 
seen  by  children.  ^  In  the  second  and  third  grades,  all,  and  in  the 
fourth,  ninety-five  per  cent  specified  help  in  studies.  This  falls  off 
rapidly  in  the  sixth,  seventh,  and  eighth  grades  to  thirty-nine  per 
cent,  while  at  the  same  time  the  quality  of  patience  in  the  upper 
grades  rises  from  a  mention  by  two  to  twenty-two  per  cent. 

^  The  Suggestibility  of  Children.  Pedagogical  Seminary,  December, 
1896,  vol.  4,  p.  211. 

2  Characteristics  of  the  Best  Teacher  as  Recognized  by  Children.  By 
H.  E.  Kratz.  Pedagogical  Seminary,  June,  1896,  vol.  3,  pp.  413-418. 
See  also  The  High  School  Teacher  from  the  Pupil's  Point  of  View,  by 
W.  F.  Book.   Pedagogical  Seminary,  September,  1905,  vol.  12,  pp.  239-288. 

210 


THE   GROWTH   OF  SOCIAL   IDEALS 

Sanford  BelP  collated  the  answers  of  543  males  and  488  females 
as  to  who  of  all  their  past  teachers  did  them  most  good,  and 
wherein;  whom  they  loved  and  disliked  most,  and  why.  His 
most  striking  result  is  presented  in  a  curve  which  shows  that 
fourteen  in  girls  and  sixteen  in  boys  is  the  age  in  which  most  good 
was  felt  to  have  been  done,  and  that  curves  culminating  at  twelve 
for  both  sexes  but  not  falling  rapidly  until  fifteen  or  sixteen  re- 
present the  period  when  the  strongest  and  most  indelible  dislikes 
were  felt.  What  seems  to  be  most  appreciated  in  teachers  is  the 
giving  of  purpose,  arousing  of  ideals,  kindling  of  ambition  to  be 
something  or  do  something  and  so  giving  an  object  in  life,  encour- 
agement to  overcome  circumstances,  and,  in  general,  inspiring  self- 
confidence  and  giving  direction.^  Next  come  personal  sympathy 
and  interest,  kindness,  confidence,  a  little  praise,  being  understood; 
and  next,  special  help  in  lessons,  or  timely  and  kindly  advice,  while 
stability  and  poise  of  character,  purity,  the  absence  of  hypocrisy, 
independence,  personal  beauty,  athleticism  and  vigor  are  prominent. 
It  is  singular  that  those  of  each  sex  have  been  most  helped  by  their 
own  sex  and  that  this  prominence  is  far  greatest  in  men.  Four- 
fifths  of  the  men  and  nearly  one-half  of  the  women,  however,  got 
most  help  from  men.  Male  teachers,  especially  near  adolescence, 
seem  most  helpful  for  both  sexes. 

The  qualities  that  inspire  most  dislike  are  malevolence,  sarcasm, 
unjust  punishment,  suspicion,  severity,  sternness,  absence  of  laugh- 
ing and  smiling,  indifference,  threats  and  broken  vows,  excessive 
scolding  and  "roasting,"  and  fondness  for  inflicting  blows.  The 
teacher  who  does  not  smile  is  far  more  liable  to  excite  animosity. 
Most  boys  dislike  men  most,  and  girls'  dislikes  are  about  divided. 
The  stories  of  school  cruelties  and  indignities  are  painful.  Often 
inveterate  grudges  are  established  by  little  causes,  and  it  is  singular 
how  permanent  and  indelible  strong  dislikes  are  for  the  majority  of 
children.  In  many  cases,  aversions  engendered  before  ten  have 
lasted  with  little  diminution  till  maturity,  and  there  is  a  sad  record 
of  children  who  have  lost  a  term,  a  year,  or  dropped  school  altogether 
because  of  ill  treatment  or  partiality. 

Nearly  two  thousand  children  were  asked  what  they  would  do  in  a 
specific  case  of  conflict  between  teacher  and  parents.  It  was  found 
that,  while  for  young  children  parental  authority  was  preferred,  a 
marked  decline  began  about  eleven  and  was  most  rapid  after  fourteen 
in  girls  and  fifteen  in  boys,  and  that  there  was  a  nearly  corresponding 

1  A  Study  of  the  Teacher's  Influence.  Pedagogical  Seminary,  Decem- 
ber, 1900,  vol.  7,  pp.  492-525. 

211 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

increase  in  the  number  of  pubescents  who  preferred  the  teacher's  au- 
thority. The  reasons  for  their  choice  were  also  analyzed,  and  it  was 
found  that  whereas  for  the  young,  unconditioned  authority  was  gen- 
erally satisfactory,  with  pubescents,  abstract  authority  came  into 
marked  predominance,  "until  when  the  children  have  reached  the 
age  of  sixteen  almost  seventy-five  per  cent  of  their  reasons  belong  to 
this  class,  and  the  children  show  themselves  able  to  extend  the  idea 
of  authority  without  violence  to  their  sense  of  justice." 

On  a  basis  of  1,400  papers  answering  the  question 
whom,  of  anyone  ever  heard  or  read  of,  they  would  like  to 
resemble,  Barnes  ^  found  that  girls'  ideals  were  far  more 
often  found  in  the  immediate  circle  of  their  acquaint- 
ance than  boys,  and  that  those  within  that  circle  were 
more  often  in  their  own  family,  but  that  the  tend- 
ency to  go  outside  their  personal  knowledge  and  choose 
historical  and  public  characters  was  greatly  augmented 
at  puberty,  when  also  the  heroes  of  philanthropy  showed 
marked  gain  in  prominence.  Boys  rarely  chose  women 
as  their  ideals;  but  in  America,  half  the  girls  at  eight 
and  two-thirds  at  eighteen  chose  male  characters.  The 
range  of  important  women  ideals  among  the  girls  was 
surprisingly  small.  Barnes  fears  that  if  from  the  choice 
of  relatives  as  ideals,  the  expansion  to  remote  or  world 
heroes  is  too  fast,  it  may  "  lead  to  disintegration  of 
character  and  reckless  living."  '^  If,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  is  expanded  too  slowly  we  shall  have  that  arrested  de- 
velopment which  makes  good  ground  in  which  to  grow 
stupidity,  brutality,  and  drunkenness — the  first  fruits  of 
a  sluggish  and  self-contained  mind."  '^  No  one  can 
consider  the  regularity  with  which  local  ideals  die  out 
and  are  replaced  by  world  ideals  without  feeling  that 
he  is  in  the  presence  of  law-abiding  forces,"  and  this 

1  Children's  Ideals.     Pedagogical  Seminarv,  April,  1900,  vol.  7,  pp. 
3-12. 

212 


THE   GROWTH   OF  SOCIAL  IDEALS 

emphasizes  the  fact  that  the  teacher  or  parent  does  not 
work  in  a  world  governed  by  caprice. 

The  compositions  written  by  thousands  of  children 
in  New  York  on  what  they  wanted  to  do  when  they 
were  grown  up  were  collated  by  Dr.  Thurber.^  The 
replies  were  serious,  and  showed  that  poor  children 
looked  forward  willingly  to  severe  labor  and  the  in- 
creased earnestness  of  adolescent  years,  and  the  better 
answers  to  the  question  why  were  noteworthy.  All 
anticipated  giving  up  the  elastic  joyousness  of  child- 
hood and  felt  the  need  of  patience.  Up  to  ten,  there 
was  an  increase  in  the  number  of  those  who  had  two 
or  more  desires.  This  number  declined  rapidly  at 
eleven,  rose  as  rapidly  at  twelve,  and  slowly  fell  later. 
Preferences  for  a  teacher's  life  exceeded  in  girls  up  to 
nine,  fell  rapidly  at  eleven,  increased  slightly  the  next 
year,  and  declined  thereafter.  The  ideal  of  becoming 
a  dressmaker  and  milliner  increased  till  ten,  fell  at 
eleven,  rose  rapidly  to  a  maximum  at  thirteen,  when 
it  eclipsed  teaching,  and  then  fell  permanently  again. 
The  professions  of  clerk  and  stenographer  showed  a 
marked  rise  from  eleven  and  a  half.  The  number  of 
boys  who  chose  the  father's  occupation  attained  its 
maximum  at  nine  and  its  minimum  at  twelve,  with  a 
slight  rise  to  fourteen,  when  the  survey  ended.  The 
ideal  of  tradesman  culminated  at  eight,  with  a  second 
rise  at  thirteen.  The  reason  "  to  earn  money  "  reached 
its  high  maximum  of  fifty  per  cent  at  twelve,  and  fell 
very  rapidly.  The  reason  "  because  I  like  it  "  culmi- 
nated at  ten  and  fell  steadily  thereafter.  The  motive  that 
influenced  the  choice  of  a  profession  and  which  was 
altruistic  toward  parents  or  for  their  benefit  culminated 

1  Transactions  of  the  Illinois  Society  for  Child  Study,  vol.  2,  No.  2, 
1896,  pp.  41-46. 

213 


YOUTH  :  ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

at  twelve  and  a  half,  and  then  declined.  The  desire  for 
character  increased  somewhat  throughout,  but  rapidly 
after  twelve,  and  the  impulse  to  do  good  to  the  world, 
which  had  risen  slowly  from  nine,  mounted  sharply  after 
thirteen.  Thus,  "  at  eleven  all  the  ideas  and  tendencies 
are  increasing  toward  a  maximum.  At  twelve  we  find 
the  altruistic  desires  for  the  welfare  of  parents,  the 
reason  '  to  earn  money  ';  at  thirteen  the  desire  on  the 
part  of  the  girls  to  be  dressmakers,  also  to  be  clerks  and 
stenographers.  At  fourteen  culminates  the  desire  for 
a  business  career  in  bank  or  office  among  the  boys,  the 
consciousness  of  life's  uncertainties  which  appeared 
first  at  twelve,  the  desire  for  character,  and  the  hope  of 
doing  the  world  good." 

''  What  would  you  like  to  be  in  an  imaginary  new 
city?  "  was  a  question  answered  by  1,234  written 
papers.^  One  hundred  and  fourteen  different  occupa- 
tions were  given;  that  of  teacher  led  with  the  girls  at 
every  age  except  thirteen  and  fourteen,  when  dress- 
maker and  milliner  took  precedence.  The  motive  of 
making  money  led  among  the  boys  at  every  age  except 
fourteen  and  sixteen,  when  occupations  chosen  because 
they  w^ere  liked  led.  The  greatest  number  of  those  who 
chose  the  parent's  occupation  was  found  at  thirteen,  but 
from  that  age  it  steadily  declined  and  independent 
choice  came  into  prominence.  The  maximum  of  girls 
who  chose  parental  vocations  was  at  fourteen.  ]\Iotives 
of  philanthropy  reached  nearly  their  highest  point  in 
girls  and  boys  at  thirteen. 

Jegi  ^  obtained  letters  addressed  to  real  or  imaginary 

1  Children's  Ambitions.  By  H.  M,  Willard.  Barnes's  Studies  in 
Education,  vol.  2,  pp.  243-258.  (Privately  printed  by  Earl  Barnes, 
4401  Sansom  Street,  Philadelphia.) 

2  Transactions  of  the  Illinois  Society  for  Child  Study,  October,  1898, 
vol.  3,  No.  3,  pp.  131-144. 

214 


THE   GROWTH  OF  SOCIAL   IDEALS 

friends  from  3,000  German  children  in  Milwaukee,  asking 
what  they  desired  to  do  when  they  grew^  up,  and  why, 
and  tabulated  returns  from  200  boys  and  200  girls  for 
each  age  from  eight  to  fourteen  inclusive.  He  also 
found  a  steadily  decreasing  influence  of  relatives  to 
thirteen;  in  early  adolescence,  the  personal  motive  of 
choosing  an  occupation  because  it  was  liked  increased, 
while  from  twelve  in  boys  and  thirteen  in  girls  the  con- 
sideration of  finding  easy  vocations  grew  rapidly  strong. 
L.  W.  Kline  ^  studied  by  the  census  method  returns 
from  2,594  children,  who  w^re  asked  what  they  wished 
to  be  and  do.  He  found  that  in  naming  both  ideals 
and  occupations  girls  w^ere  more  conservative  than  boys, 
but  more  likely  to  give  a  reason  for  their  choice.  In 
this  respect  country  children  resembled  boys  more  than 
city  children.  Country  boys  w^ere  more  prone  to  in- 
attention, w^re  more  independent  and  able  to  care  for 
themselves,  suggesting  that  the  home  life  of  the  country 
child  is  more  effective  in  shaping  ideals  and  character 
than  that  of  the  city  child.  Industrial  occupations  are 
preferred  by  the  younger  children,  the  professional  and 
technical  pursuits  increasing  wdth  age.  Judgments  of 
rights  and  justice  with  the  young  are  more  prone  to 
issue  from  emotional  rather  than  from  intellectual  proc- 
esses. Country  children  seem  more  altruistic  than  those 
in  the  city,  and  while  girls  are  more  sympathetic  than 
boys,  they  are  also  more  easily  prejudiced.  Many  of 
these  returns  bear  unmistakable  marks  that  in  some 
homes  and  schools  moralization  has  been  excessive  and 
has  produced  a  sentimental  type  of  morality  and  often 
a  feverish  desire  to  express  ethical  views  instead  of 
trusting  to  suggestion.    Children  are  very  prone  to  have 

1  A  study  in  Juvenile  Ethics.     Pedagogical  Seminary,  June,  1903, 
vol.  10,  pp.  239-266. 

15  215 


YOUTH  :  ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

one  code  of  ideals  for  themselves  and  another  for  others. 
Boys,  too,  are  more  original  than  girls,  and  country 
children  more  than  city  children. 

Friedrich  ^  asked  German  school  children  what  person 
they  chose  as  their  pattern.  The  result  showed  differ- 
ences of  age,  sex,  and  creed.  First  of  all  came  characters 
in  history,  which  seemed  to  show  that  this  study  for  chil- 
dren of  the  sixth  and  seventh  grades  was  essentially  eth- 
ical or  a  training  of  mood  and  disposition  {Gesinniingsim- 
terricht),  and  this  writer  suggests  reform  in  this  respect. 
He  seems  to  think  that  the  chief  purpose  of  history  for 
this  age  should  be  ethical.  Next  came  the  influence  of 
the  Bible,  although  it  was  plain  that  this  was  rather  in 
spite  of  the  catechism  and  the  method  of  memoriter  work. 
Here,  too,  the  immediate  environment  at  this  age  fur- 
nished few  ideals  (four  and  one-fifth  per  cent),  for 
children  seem  to  have  keener  eyes  for  the  faults  than  for 
the  virtues  of  those  near  them.  Religion,  therefore,  should 
chiefly  be  directed  to  the  emotions  and  not  to  the  under- 
standing. This  census  also  suggested  more  care  that  the 
reading  of  children  should  contain  good  examples  in  their 
environment,  and  also  that  the  matter  of  instruction 
should  be  more  fully  adapted  to  the  conditions  of  sex. 

Friedrich  found  as  his  chief  age  result  that  children 
of  the  seventh  or  older  class  in  the  German  schools  laid 
distinctly  greater  stress  upon  characters  distinguished  by 
bravery  and  courage  than  did  the  children  of  the  sixth 
grade,  while  the  latter  more  frequently  selected  characters 
illustrating  piety  and  holiness.  The  author  divided  his 
characters  into  thirty-five  classes,  illustrating  qualities, 
and  found  that  national  activity  led,  with  piety  a  close 
second ;  that  then  came  in  order  those  illustrating  firmness 

1  Die  Ideale  der  Kinder.  Zeitschrift  fiir  padagogische  Psychologie, 
Patkologie  und  Hygiene,  Jahrgang  3,  Heft  1,  pp.  38-64. 

216 


THE   GROWTH   OF  SOCIAL   IDEALS 

of  faith,  bravery,  modesty,  and  chastity;  then  pity  and 
sympathy,  industry,  goodness,  patience,  etc. 

Taylor,  Young,  Hamilton,  Chambers,  and  others,  have 
also  collected  interesting  data  on  what  children  and 
young  people  hope  to  be,  do,  whom  they  would  like  to  be, 
or  resemble,  etc.  Only  a  few  at  adolescence  feel  them- 
selves so  good  or  happy  that  they  are  content  to  be  them- 
selves. Most  show  more  or  less  discontent  at  their  lot. 
From  six  to  eleven  or  twelve,  the  number  who  find  their 
ideals  among  their  acquaintances  falls  off  rapidly,  and 
historical  characters  rise  to  a  maximum  at  or  before  the 
earliest  teens.  From  eleven  or  twelve  on  into  the  middle 
teens  contemporary  ideals  increase  steadily.  London 
children  are  more  backward  in  this  expansion  of  ideals 
than  Americans,  while  girls  choose  more  acquaintance 
ideals  at  all  ages  than  do  boys.  The  expansion,  these 
authors  also  trace  largely  to  the  study  of  history.  The 
George  Washington  ideal,  which  leads  all  the  rest  by  far 
and  is  greatly  overworked,  in  contrast  with  the  many 
heroes  of  equal  rank  found  in  England,  pales  soon,  as 
imperfections  are  seen,  and  those  now  making  history 
loom  up.  This  is  the  normal  age  to  free  from  bondage 
to  the  immediate  present,  and  this  freedom  is  one  meas- 
ure of  education.  Bible  heroes  are  chosen  as  ideals  by 
only  a  very  small  percentage,  mostly  girls,  far  more 
characters  being  from  fiction  and  mythology;  where 
Jesus  is  chosen.  His  human  is  preferred  to  His  divine 
side.  Again,  it  would  seem  that  teachers  would  be  ideals, 
especially  as  many  girls  intend  to  teach,  but  they  are 
generally  unpopular  as  choices.  In  an  ideal  system  they 
would  be  the  first  step  in  expansion  from  home  ideals. 
Military  heroes  and  inventors  play  leading  roles  in  the 
choices  of  pubescent  boys. 

Girls  at  all  school  ages  and  increasingly  up  the  grades 
217 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

prefer  foreign  ideals,  to  be  the  wife  of  a  man  of  title,  as 
aristocracies  offer  special  opportunities  for  woman  to 
shine,  and  life  near  the  source  of  fashion  is  very  attract- 
ive, at  least  up  to  sixteen.  The  saddest  fact  in  these 
studies  is  that  nearly  half  our  American  pubescent  girls, 
or  nearly  three  times  as  many  as  in  England,  choose  male 
ideals,  or  would  be  men.  Girls,  too,  have  from  six  to 
fifteen  times  as  many  ideals  as  boys.  In  this  significant 
fact  we  realize  how  modern  woman  has  cut  loose  from  all 
old  moorings  and  is  drifting  with  no  destination  and  no 
anchor  aboard.  While  her  sex  has  multiplied  in  all 
lower  and  high  school  grades,  its  ideals  are  still  too  mas- 
culine. Text-books  teach  little  about  women.  When  a 
woman's  Bible,  history,  course  of  study,  etc.,  is  proposed, 
her  sex  fears  it  may  reduce  her  to  the  old  servitude. 
While  boys  rarely,  and  then  only  when  very  young, 
choose  female  ideals,  girls'  preference  for  the  life  of  the 
other  sex  sometimes  reaches  sixty  and  seventy  per  cent. 
The  divorce  between  the  life  preferred  and  that  de- 
manded by  the  interests  of  the  race  is  often  absolute. 
Saddest  and  most  unnatural  of  all  is  the  fact  that  this 
state  of  things  increases  most  rapidly  during  just  those 
years  when  ideals  of  womanhood  should  be  developed  and 
become  most  dominant,  till  it  seems  as  if  the  female 
character  was  threatened  with  disintegration.  While 
statistics  are  not  yet  sufficient  to  be  reliable  on  the  sub- 
ject, there  is  some  indication  that  woman  later  slowly 
reverts  toward  ideals  not  only  from  her  own  sex  but  also 
from  the  circle  of  her  own  acquaintances. 

The  reasons  for  the  choice  of  ideals  are  various  and 
not  yet  well  determined.  Civic  virtues  certainly  rise; 
material  and  utilitarian  considerations  do  not  seem  to 
much,  if  at  all,  at  adolescence,  and  in  some  data  decline. 
Position,   fame,  honor,   and   general   greatness  increase 

218 


THE   GROWTH   OF   SOCIAL   IDEALS 

rapidly,  but  moral  qualities  rise  highest  and  also  fastest 
just  before  and  near  puberty  and  continue  to  increase 
later  yet.  By  these  choices  both  sexes,  but  girls  far  most, 
show  increasing  admiration  of  ethical  and  social  qualities. 
Artistic  and  intellectual  traits  also  rise  quite  steadily 
from  ten  or  eleven  onward,  but  with  no  such  rapidity, 
and  reach  no  such  height  as  military  ability  and  achieve- 
ment for  boys.  Striking  in  these  studies  is  the  rapid  in- 
crease, especially  from  eight  to  fourteen,  of  the  sense  of 
historic  time  for  historic  persons.  These  long  since  dead 
are  no  longer  spoken  of  as  now  living.  Most  of  these 
choices  are  direct  expressions  of  real  differences  of  taste 
and  character. 

Property,  Kline  and  France  ^  have  defined  as  ' '  any- 
thing that  the  individual  may  acquire  which  sustains  and 
prolongs  life,  favors  survival,  and  gives  an  advantage 
over  opposing  forces."  Many  animals  and  even  insects 
store  up  food  both  for  themselves  and  for  their  young. 
Very  early  in  life  children  evince  signs  of  ownership. 
Letourneau  ^  says  that  the  notion  of  private  property, 
which  seems  to  us  so  natural,  dawned  late  and  slowly,  and 
that  common  ownership  was  the  rule  among  primitive 
people.  Value  is  sometimes  measured  by  use  and  some- 
times by  the  work  required  to  produce  it.  Before  pu- 
berty, there  is  great  eagerness  to  possess  things  that  are 
of  immediate  service;  but  after  its  dawn,  the  desire  of 
possession  takes  another  form,  and  money  for  its  own 
sake,  which  is  at  first  rather  an  abstraction,  comes  to 
be  respected  or  regarded  as  an  object  of  extreme  de- 
sire, because  it  is  seen  to  be  the  embodiment  of  all  values. 


1  The  Psychology  of  Ownership.     Pedagogical  Seminary,  December, 
1899,  vol.  6,  pp.  421-470. 

2  Property:  Its  Origin  and  Development.     Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  1892, 

219 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

The  money  sense,  as  it  is  now  often  called,  is  very  complex  and 
has  not  yet  been  satisfactorily  analyzed  by  psychology.  Eibot  and 
others  trace  its  origin  to  prevision  which  they  think  animals  that 
hoard  food  feel.  Monroe^  has  tabulated  returns  from  977  boys  and 
1,090  girls  from  six  to  sixteen  in  answer  to  the  question  as  to  what 
they  would  do  with  a  small  monthly  allowance.  The  following 
table  shows  the  marked  increase  at  the  dawn  of  adolescence  of  the 
number  who  would  save  it: 


Age. 

Boys. 

Girls. 

Age. 

Boys. 

Girls. 

7. 

.  .  43  per  cent 

36  per 

cent 

12.. 

.  .  82  per  cent 

64  per  cent 

8. 

..45       " 

34 

" 

13.. 

..88       " 

78 

9. 

..48       " 

35 

u 

14.. 

..85       " 

80       " 

10. 

.  .  58       " 

50 

11 

15.. 

..83       " 

78       " 

11. 

..71       " 

58 

(C 

16.. 

..85       " 

82 

This  tendency  to  thrift  is  strongest  in  boys,  and  both  sexes  often 
show  the  tendency  to  moralize,  that  is  so  strong  in  the  early  teens. 
Much  of  our  school  work  in  arithmetic  is  dominated  by  the  money 
sense;  and  school  savings-banks,  at  first  for  the  poor,  are  now  extend- 
ing to  children  of  all  classes.  This  sense  tends  to  prevent  pauperism, 
prodigality,  is  an  immense  stimulus  to  the  imagination  and  develops 
purpose  to  pursue  a  distant  object  for  a  long  time.  To  see  all  things 
and  values  in  terms  of  money  has,  of  course,  its  pedagogic  and 
ethical  limitations;  but  there  is  a  stage  where  it  is  a  great  educational 
advance,  and  it,  too,  is  full  of  phylogenetic  suggestions. 

Social  judgment,  cronies,  solitude. — The  two  follow- 
ing observations  afford  a  glimpse  of  the  development  of 
moral  judgments.  From  1,000  boys  and  1,000  girls 
of  each  age  from  six  to  sixteen  who  answered  the 
question  as  to  what  should  be  done  to  a  girl  with  a 
new  box  of  paints  who  beautified  the  parlor  chairs 
with  them  with  a  wish  to  please  her  mother,  the  follow- 
ing conclusion  was  drawn.-     Most  of  the  younger  chil- 


1  Money-Sense  of  Children.  Will  S.  Monroe.  Pedagogical  Seminary, 
March,  1899,  vol.  6,  pp.  152-15.S. 

2  A  Study  of  Children's  Rights,  as  Seen  by  Themselves.  By  M.  E. 
Schallenberger.  Pedagogical  Seminary,  October,  1894,  vol.  3,  pp. 
87-96. 

220 


THE  GROWTH   OF  SOCIAL   IDEALS 

dren  would  whip  the  girl,  but  from  fourteen  on  the  num- 
ber declines  very  rapidly.  Few  of  the  young  children 
suggest  explaining  why  it  was  wrong;  while  at  tAvelve, 
181,  and  at  sixteen,  751  would  explain.  The  motive 
of  the  younger  children  in  punishment  is  revenge;  with 
the  older  ones  that  of  preventing  a  repetition  of  the  act 
comes  in ;  and  higher  and  later  comes  the  purpose  of  re- 
form. With  age  comes  also  a  marked  distinction  between 
the  act  and  its  motive  and  a  sense  of  the  girl's  ignorance. 
Only  the  older  children  would  suggest  extracting  a  prom- 
ise not  to  offend  again.  Thus  with  puberty  comes  a 
change  of  view-point  from  judging  actions  by  results  to 
judging  by  motives,  and  only  the  older  ones  see  that 
wrong  can  be  done  if  there  are  no  bad  consequences. 
There  is  also  with  increased  years  a  great  development 
of  the  quality  of  mercy. 

One  hundred  children  of  each  sex  and  age  between  six  and  sixteen 
were  asked  what  they  would  do  with  a  burglar,  the  question  stating 
that  the  penalty  was  five  years  in  prison.  ^  Of  the  younger  children 
nearly  nine-tenths  ignored  the  law  and  fixed  upon  some  other  penalty, 
but  from  twelve  years  there  is  a  steady  advance  in  those  who  would 
inflict  the  legal  penalty,  while  at  sixteen,  seventy-four  per  cent  would 
have  the  criminal  punished  according  to  law.  Thus  "with  the 
dawn  of  adolescence  at  the  age  of  twelve  or  shortly  after  comes  the 
recognition  of  a  larger  life,  a  life  to  be  lived  in  common  with  others, 
and  with  this  recognition  the  desire  to  sustain  the  social  code  made 
for  the  common  welfare,"  and  punishment  is  no  longer  regarded  as 
an  individual  and  arbitrary  matter. 

From  another  question  answered  by  1,914  children  ^  it  was  found 
that  with  the  development  of  the  psychic  faculties  in  youth,  there 
was  an  increasing  appreciation  of  punishment  as  preventive;  an  in- 


1  Children's  Attitude  toward  Law.  By  E.  M.  Darrah.  Barnes's 
Studies  in  Education,  vol.  1,  pp.  213-216.  (Stanford  University,  1897.) 
G.  E.  Stechert  and  Co.,  New  York. 

2  Class  Punishment.  By  Caroline  Frear.  Barnes's  Studies  in  Edu- 
cation, vol.  1,  pp.  33.3-337. 

221 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

creasing  sense  of  the  value  of  individuality  and  of  the  tendency  to 
demand  protection  of  personal  rights;  a  change  from  a  sense  of 
justice  based  on  feeling  and  on  faith  in  authority  to  that  based  on 
reason  and  understanding.  Children's  attitude  toward  punishment 
for  weak  time  sense,  tested  by  2,536  children  from  six  to  sixteen,  ^ 
showed  also  a  marked  pubescent  increase  in  the  sense  of  the  need  of 
the  remedial  function  of  punishment  as  distinct  from  the  view  of  it 
as  vindictive,  or  getting  even,  common  in  earlier  years.  There  is 
also  a  marked  increase  in  discriminating  the  kinds  and  degrees  of 
offenses;  in  taking  account  of  mitigating  circumstances,  the  incon- 
venience caused  others,  the  involuntary  nature  of  the  offense  and 
the  purpose  of  the  culprit.  All  this  continues  to  increase  up  to 
sixteen,  where  these  studies  leave  the  child. 

An  interesting  effect  of  the  social  instinct  appears  in  August 
Mayer's  ^  elaborate  study  made  upon  fourteen  boys  in  the  fifth  and 
sixth  grade  of  a  Wiirzburg  school  to  determine  whether  they  could 
work  better  together  or  alone.  The  tests  were  in  dictation,  mental 
and  written  arithmetic,  memory,  and  Ebbinghaus's  combination 
exercises,  and  all  were  given  with  every  practicable  precaution  to 
make  the  other  conditions  uniform.  The  conclusions  demonstrate 
the  advantages  of  collective  over  individual  instruction.  Under 
the  former  condition,  emulation  is  stronger  and  work  more  rapid  and 
better  in  quality.  From  this  it  is  inferred  that  pupils  should  not  be 
grouped  according  to  ability,  for  the  dull  are  most  stimulated  by  the 
presence  of  the  bright,  the  bad  by  the  good,  etc.  Thus  work  at 
home  is  prone  to  deteriorate,  and  experimental  pedagogy  shows 
that  the  social  impulse  is  on  the  whole  a  stronger  spur  for  boys  of 
eleven  or  twelve  than  the  absence  of  distraction  which  solitude 
brings. 

From  the  answers  of  1,068  boys  and  1,268  girls  from  seven  to  six- 
teen on  the  kind  of  chum  they  liked  best,^  it  appears  that  with  the 
teens  children  are  more  anxious  for  chums  that  can  keep  secrets  and 
dress  neatly,  and  there  is  an  increased  number  who  are  liked  for 
qualities  that  supplement  rather  than  duplicate  those  of  the  chooser. 
"There  is  an  apparent  struggle  between  the  real  actual  self  and  the 
ideal  self;  a  pretty  strong  desire  to  have  a  chum  that  embodies  the 


1  Children's  Attitude  toward  Piinishinent  for  Weak  Time  Sense.      By 
D.  S.  Snedden.      Barnes's  Studies  in  Education,  vol.  1,  pp.  344-351. 

2  Ueber  Einzel-  und  Gesamtleistung  des  Schulkindes.     Archiv  fiir  die 
gesamte  Psychologie,  1  Band,  2  and  3  Heft,  1903,  pp.  276-416. 

3  Development  of  the  Social  Consciousness  of  Children.      By  Will  S. 
Monroe.     North-Western  Monthly,  September,  1898,  vol.  9,  pp.  31-36. 

')99 


THE   GROWTH   OF   SOCIAL   IDEALS 

traits  youth  most  desire  but  which  they  are  conscious  of  lacking." 
The  strong  hke  the  weak;  those  fuU  of  fun  the  serious;  the  timid  the 
bold;  the  small  the  large,  etc.  Only  children^  illustrate  differing 
effects  of  isolation,  while  "mashes"  and  "crushes"  and  ultra-crony- 
ism with  "selfishness  for  two"  show  the  results  of  abnormal  restric- 
tion of  the  irradiation  of  the  social  instinct  which  should  now  occur.^ 
M.  H.  Small,  ^  after  pointing  out  that  communal  animals  are  more 
intelligent  than  those  with  solitary  habits,  and  that  even  to  name 
all  the  irradiations  of  the  social  instinct  would  be  to  write  a  history 
of  the  human  race,  studied  nearly  five  hundred  cases  of  eminent  men 
who  developed  proclivities  to  solitude.  It  is  interesting  to  observe 
in  how  many  of  these  cases  this  was  developed  in  adolescence  when, 
with  the  horror  of  mediocrity,  comes  introspection,  apathy,  irresolu- 
tion, and  subjectivism.  The  grounds  of  repulsion  from  society  at 
this  age  may  be  disappointed  hunger  for  praise,  wounded  vanity,  the 
reaction  from  over-assertion,  or  the  nursings  of  some  high  ideals,  as 
it  is  slowly  realized  that  in  society  the  individual  cannot  be  absolute. 
The  motives  to  self-isolation  may  be  because  youth  feels  its  lack  of 
physical  or  moral  force  to  compete  with  men,  or  they  may  be  due  to 
the  failure  of  others  to  concede  to  the  exactions  of  inordinate  egotism 
and  are  directly  proportional  to  the  impulse  to  magnify  self,  or  to 
the  remoteness  of  common  social  interests  from  immediate  personal 
desire  or  need,  and  inversely  as  the  number  and  range  of  interests 
seen  to  be  common  and  the  clearness  with  which  social  relations  are 
realized.  While  maturity  of  character  needs  some  solitude,  too 
much  dwarfs  it,  and  more  or  less  of  the  same  paralysis  of  associa- 
tion follows  which  is  described  in  the  nostalgia  of  arctic  journeys, 
deserts,  being  lost  in  the  jungle,  solitary  confinement,  and  in  the 
interesting  stories  of  feral  men.*  In  some  of  these  cases  the  mind  is 
saved  from  entire  stultification  by  pets,  imaginary  companions,  tasks, 
etc.  Normally  "the  tendency  to  solitude  at  adolescence  indicates 
not  fulness  but  want";  and  a  judicious  balance  between  rest  and 


1  Bohannon:  The  Only  Child  in  a  Family.  Pedagogical  Seminary 
April,  1898,  vol.  5,  pp.  475-496.  ' 

2  J.  Delitsch:  Uber  Schiilerfreundschaften  in  einer  Volksschulklasse. 
Die  Kinderfehler.     Fiinfter  Jahrgang,  Mai,  1900,  pp.  150-163. 

3  On  Some  Psychical  Relations  of  Society  and  Solitude.  Pedagogical 
Seminary,  April,  1900,  vol.  7,  pp.  13-69. 

*  A.  Rauber:  Homo  Sapiens  Ferus.  J.  Brehse,  Leipzig,  1888.  See 
also  my  Social  Aspects  of  Education;  Pedagogical  Seminary,  March,  1902, 
vol.  9,  pp.  81-91.  Also  Kropotkin:  Mutual  Aid  a  Factor  of  Evolution. 
W.  Heinemann,  London,  1902. 

223 


YOUTH  :  ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

work,  pursuit  of  favorite  lines,  genuine  sympathy,  and  wise  com- 
panionship will  generally  normalize  the  social  relation. 

First  forms  of  spontaneous  social  organizations. — 
Gulick  has  studied  the  propensity  of  boys  from  thirteen 
on  to  consort  in  gangs,  do  ''  dawsies  "  and  stumps,  get 
into  scrapes  together,  and  fight  and  suffer  for  one 
another.  The  manners  and  customs  of  the  gang  are  to 
build  shanties  or  "  hunkies, "  hunt  with  sling  shots, 
build  fires  before  huts  in  the  woods,  cook  their  squirrels 
and  other  game,  play  Indian,  build  tree-platforms,  where 
they  smoke  or  troop  about  some  leader,  wTio  may  have 
an  old  revolver.  They  find  or  excavate  caves,  or  perhaps 
roof  them  over;  the  barn  is  a  blockhouse  or  a  battle-ship. 
In  the  early  teens  boys  begin  to  use  frozen  snowballs  or 
put  pebbles  in  them,  or  perhaps  have  stone-fights  be- 
tween gangs  than  which  no  contiguous  African  tribes 
could  be  more  hostile.  They  become  toughs  and  tantalize 
policemen  and  peddlers ;  ' '  lick  ' '  every  enemy  or  even 
stranger  found  alone  on  their  grounds ;  often  smash  win- 
dows; begin  to  use  sticks  and  brass  knuckles  in  their 
fights ;  pelt  each  other  with  green  apples ;  carry  shillalahs, 
or  perhaps  air-rifles.  The  more  plucky  arrange  fights 
beforehand;  rifle  unoccupied  houses;  set  ambushes  for 
gangs  with  which  they  are  at  feud ;  perhaps  have  secrets 
and  initiations  where  new  boys  are  triced  up  by  the  legs 
and  butted  against  trees  and  rocks.  When  painted  for 
their  Indian  fights,  they  may  grow  so  excited  as  to  per- 
haps rush  into  the  water  or  into  the  school-room  yelling ; 
mimic  the  violence  of  strikes ;  kindle  dangerous  bonfires ; 
pelt  policemen,  and  shout  vile  nicknames. 

The  spontaneous  tendency  to  develop  social  and  politi- 
cal organizations  among  boys  in  pubescent  years  was  well 
seen  in  a  school  near  Baltimore  in  the  midst  of  an  eight- 
hundred-acre  farm  richly  diversified  with  swamp   and 

224 


THE   GROWTH   OF  SOCIAL   IDEALS 

forest  and  abounding  with  birds,  squirrels,  rabbits,  etc. 
Soon  after  the  opening  of  this  school  ^  the  boys  gathered 
nuts  in  parties.  When  a  tree  was  reached  which  others 
had  shaken,  an  unwritten  law  soon  required  those  who 
wished  to  shake  it  further  first  to  pile  up  all  nuts  under 
the  tree,  while  those  who  failed  to  do  so  were  universally 
regarded  as  dishonest  and  every  boy's  hand  was  against 
them.  To  pile  them  involved  much  labor,  so  that  the 
second  party  usually  sought  fresh  trees,  and  partial  shak- 
ing practically  gave  possession  of  all  the  fruits  on  a  tree. 
They  took  birds'  eggs  freely,  and  whenever  a  bird  was 
found  in  building,  or  a  squirrel's  hole  was  discovered, 
the  finder  tacked  his  name  on  the  tree  and  thereby  con- 
firmed his  ownership,  as  he  did  if  he  placed  a  box  in 
which  a  nest  was  built.  The  ticket  must  not  blow  off,  and 
the  right  at  first  lasted  only  one  season.  In  the  rabbit- 
land  every  trap  that  was  set  preempted  ground  for  a 
fixed  number  of  yards  about  it.  Some  grasping  boys  soon 
made  many  traps  and  set  them  all  over  a  valuable  district, 
so  that  the  common  land  fell  into  a  few  hands.  Traps 
were  left  out  all  winter  and  simply  set  the  next  spring. 
All  these  rights  finally  came  into  the  ownership  of  two 
or  three  boys,  who  slowly  acquired  the  right  and  be- 
queathed their  claims  to  others  for  a  consideration,  when 
they  left  school.  The  monopolists  often  had  a  large  sur- 
plus of  rabbits  which  they  bartered  for  ' '  butters, ' '  the 
unit  being  the  ounce  of  daily  allowance.  These  could  be 
represented  by  tickets  transferred,  so  that  debts  were 
paid  with  "  butters  "  that  had  never  been  seen.  An 
agrarian  party  arose  and  demanded  a  redistribution  of 
land  from  the  monopolists,  as  Sir  Henry  Maine  shows 

1  Rudimentary  Society  among  Boys,  by  John  H.  Johnson,  McDonogh, 
Md.  McDonogh  School,  1893,  reprinted  from  Johns  Hopkins  University 
Studies  Series  2  (Historical  and  Political  Studies,  vol.  2,  No.  11). 

225 


YOUTH  :  ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

often  happened  in  the  old  village  community.  Legisla- 
tion and  judicial  procedure  were  developed  and  quarrels 
settled  by  arbitration,  ordeal,  and  wager,  and  punishment 
by  bumping  often  followed  the  decision  of  the  boy  folk- 
mote.  Scales  of  prices  for  commodities  in  ' '  butters  ' '  or 
in  pie-currency  were  evolved,  so  that  we  here  have  an 
almost  entirely  spontaneous  but  amazingly  rapid  recapit- 
ulation of  the  social  development  of  the  race  by  these 
boys. 

From  a  study  of  1,166  children's  organizations  de- 
scribed as  a  language  lesson  in  school  composition,  Mr. 
Sheldon  ^  arrives  at  some  interesting  results.  American 
children  tend  strongly  to  institutional  activities,  only 
about  thirty  per  cent  of  all  not  having  belonged  to  some 
such  organization.  Imitation  plays  a  very  important 
role,  and  girls  take  far  more  kindly  than  boys  to  societies 
organized  by  adults  for  their  benefit.  They  are  also 
more  governed  by  adult  and  altruistic  motives  in  forming 
their  organizations,  while  boys  are  nearer  to  primitive 
man.  Before  ten  comes  the  period  of  free  spontaneous 
imitation  of  every  form  of  adult  institution.  The  child 
reproduces  sympathetically  miniature  copies  of  the  life 
around  him.  On  a  farm,  his  play  is  raking,  threshing, 
building  barns,  or  on  the  seashore  he  makes  ships  and 
harbors.  In  general,  he  plays  family,  store,  church,  and 
chooses  officers  simply  because  adults  do.  The  feeling  of 
caste,  almost  absent  in  the  young,  culminates  about  ten 
and  declines  thereafter.  From  ten  to  fourteen,  however, 
associations  assume  a  new  character;  boys  especially 
cease  to  imitate  adult  organizations  and  tend  to  form 
social  units  characteristic  of  lower  stages  of  human 
evolution — pirates,   robbers,  soldiers,   lodges,   and   other 

1  The  Institutional  Activities  of  American  Children.  American 
Journal  of  Psychology,  July,  1898,  vol.  9,  pp.  425-448. 

226 


THE   GROWTH   OF   SOCIAL   IDEALS 

savage  reversionary  combinations,  where  the  strongest 
and  boldest  is  the  leader.  They  build  huts,  wear  feathers 
and  tomahawks  as  badges,  carry  knives  and  toy-pistols, 
make  raids  and  sell  the  loot.  Cowards  alone,  together 
they  fear  nothing.  Their  imagination  is  perhaps  in- 
flamed by  flash  literature  and  "  penny-dreadfuls."  Such 
associations  often  break  out  in  decadent  country  com- 
munities where,  with  fewer  and  feebler  ofl^spring,  lax 
notions  of  family  discipline  prevail  and  hoodlmnism  is 
the  direct  result  of  the  passing  of  the  rod.  These  bar- 
baric societies  have  their  place  and  give  vigor ;  but  if  un- 
reduced later,  as  in  many  unsettled  portions  of  this 
country,  a  semisavage  state  of  society  results.  At  twelve 
the  predatory  function  is  normally  subordinated,  and  if 
it  is  not  it  becomes  dangerous,  because  the  members  are 
no  longer  satisfied  with  mere  play,  but  are  stronger  and 
abler  to  do  harm,  and  the  spice  of  danger  and  its  fascina- 
tion may  issue  in  crime.  Athleticism  is  now  the  form 
into  which  these  wilder  instincts  can  be  best  transmuted, 
and  where  they  find  harmless  and  even  wholesome  vent. 
Another  change  early  in  adolescence  is  the  increased  num- 
ber of  social,  literary,  and  even  philanthropic  organiza- 
tions and  institutions  for  mutual  help — perhaps  against 
vice,  for  having  a  good  time,  or  for  holding  picnics  and 
parties.  Altruism  now  begins  to  make  itself  felt  as  a 
motive. 

Student  life  and  organizations.  Student  life  is  per- 
haps the  best  of  all  fields,  unworked  though  it  is,  for 
studying  the  natural  history  of  adolescence.  Its  modern 
record  is  over  eight  hundred  years  old  and  it  is  marked 
with  the  signatures  of  every  age,  yet  has  essential  features 
that  do  not  vary.  Cloister  and  garrison  rules  have  never 
been  enforced  even  in  the  hospice,  bursa,  inn,  ' '  house, ' ' 

227 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

"hall,"  or  dormitory,  and  in  loco  parentis'^  practises 
are  impossible,  especially  with  large  numbers.  The  very 
word  ' '  school  ' '  means  leisure^  and  in  a  world  of  toil  and 
moil  suggests  paradise.  Some  have  urged  that  elite 
youth,  exempt  from  the  struggle  to  live  and  left  to  the 
freedom  of  their  own  inclinations,  might  serve  as  a  bio- 
logical and  ethnic  compass  to  point  out  the  goal  of  hu- 
man destiny.  But  the  spontaneous  expressions  of  this 
best  age  and  condition  of  life,  with  no  other  occupation 
than  their  own  development,  have  shown  reversions  as 
often  as  progress.  The  rupture  of  home  ties  stimulates 
every  wider  vicarious  expression  of  the  social  instinct. 
Each  taste  and  trait  can  find  congenial  companionship  in 
others  and  thus  be  stimulated  to  more  intensity  and  self- 
consciousness.  Very  much  that  has  been  hitherto  re- 
pressed in  the  adolescent  soul  is  now  reenforced  by  asso- 
ciation and  may  become  excessive  and  even  aggressive. 
While  many  of  the  race-correlates  of  childhood  are  lost, 
those  of  this  stage  are  more  accessible  in  savage  and  sub- 
savage  life.  Freedom  is  the  native  air  and  vital  breath  of 
student  life.  The  sense  of  personal  liberty  is  absolutely 
indispensable  for  moral  maturity;  and  just  as  truth  can 
not  be  found  without  the  possibility  of  error,  so  the  posse 
non  peccare  -  precedes  the  non  posse  peccare^^  and  profes- 
sors must  make  a  broad  application  of  the  rule  ahiisus  non 
tollit  usum^  The  student  must  have  much  freedom  to  be 
lazy,  make  his  own  minor  morals,  vent  his  disrespect  for 
what  he  can  see  no  use  in,  be  among  strangers  to  act  him- 
self out  and  form  a  personality  of  his  own,  be  baptized 
with  the  revolutionary  and  skeptical  spirit,  and  go  to 
extremes  at  the  age  when  excesses  teach  wisdom  with 


1  In  place  of  a  parent.  2  Ability  not  to  sin, 

3  Inability  to  sin.  *  Abuse  does  not  do  away  with  use. 

998 


THE   GROWTH  OF  SOCIAL  IDEALS 

amazing  rapidity,  if  he  is  to  become  a  true  knight  of  the 
spirit  and  his  own  master.  Ziegler  ^  frankly  told  Ger- 
man students  that  about  one-tenth  of  them  would  be 
morally  lost  in  this  process,  but  insisted  that  on  the  whole 
more  good  was  done  than  by  restraint;  for,  he  said, 
"  youth  is  now  in  the  stage  of  Schiller's  bell  when  it 
was  molten  metaL" 

Of  all  safeguards  I  believe  a  rightly  cultivated  sense 
of  honor  is  the  most  effective  at  this  age.  Sadly  as  the 
unwritten  code  of  student  honor  in  all  lands  needs  re- 
vision, and  partial,  freaky,  and  utterly  perverted,  tainted 
and  cowardly  as  it  often  is,  it  really  means  what  Kant 
expressed  in  the  sublime  precept,  "  Thou  canst  because 
thou  oughtest. ' '  Fichte  said  that  Faulheit,  Feigkeit,  and 
Falschheit  ^  weve  the  three  dishonorable  things  for  stu- 
dents. If  they  would  study  the  history  and  enter  into 
the  spirit  of  their  own  fraternities,  they  would  often*  have 
keener  and  broader  ideas  of  honor  to  w^hich  they  are 
happily  so  sensitive.  If  professors  made  it  ahvays  a 
point  of  honor  to  confess  and  never  to  conceal  the  limita- 
tion of  their  knowledge,  would  scorn  all  pretense  of  it, 
place  credit  for  originality  frankly  where  it  belongs, 
teach  no  creeds  they  do  not  profoundly  believe,  or  topics 
in  w^hich  they  are  not  interested,  and  withhold  nothing 
from  those  who  want  the  truth,  they  could  from  this 
vantage  with  more  effect  bring  students  to  feel  that  the 
laziness  that,  while  outwardly  conforming,  does  no  real 
inner  work ;  that  getting  a  diploma,  as  a  professor  lately 
said,  an  average  student  could  do,  on  one  hour's  study  a 
day;  living  beyond  one's  means,  and  thus  imposing  a 
hardship  on  parents  greater  than  the  talent  of  the  son 

1  Der  deutsche  Student  am   Ende  des   19.  Jahrhunderts.     6th  Ed. 
Goschen,  Leipzig,  1896. 

2  Laziness,  cowardice,  falsehood. 

229 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

justifies ;  accepting  stipends  not  needed,  especially  to  the 
deprivation  of  those  more  needy;  using  dishonest  ways 
of  securing  rank  in  studies  or  positions  on  teams,  or 
social  standing,  are,  one  and  all,  not  only  ungentlemanly 
but  cowardly  and  mean,  and  the  axe  would  be  laid  at 
the  root  of  the  tree.  Honor  should  impel  students  to  go 
nowhere  where  they  conceal  their  college,  their  fraternity, 
or  even  their  name ;  to  keep  themselves  immaculate  from 
all  contact  with  that  class  of  women  which,  Ziegler  states, 
brought  twenty-five  per  cent  of  the  students  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Berlin  in  a  single  year  to  physicians;  to  re- 
member that  other 's  sisters  are  as  cherished  as  their  own ; 
to  avoid  those  sins  against  confiding  innocence  which  cry 
for  vengeance,  as  did  Valentine  against  Faust,  and  which 
strengthen  the  hate  of  social  classes  and  make  mothers 
and  sisters  seem  tedious  because  low  ideas  of  womanhood 
have  been  implanted,  and  which  give  a  taste  for  mucky 
authors  that  reek  with  suggestiveness ;  and  to  avoid  the 
waste  of  nerve  substance  and  nerve  weakness  in  ways 
which  Ibsen  and  Tolstoi  have  described.  These  things 
are  the  darkest  blot  on  the  honor  of  youth. 

Associations  for  youth  devised  or  guided  hy  adidts. 
Here  we  enter  a  very  different  realm.     Forbush  ^  under- 

1  The  Social  Pedagogy  of  Boyhood.  Pedagogical  Seminary,  October^ 
1900,  vol.  7,  pp.  307-346.  See  also  his  The  Boy  Problem,  with  an  intro- 
duction by  G.  Stanley  Hall,  The  Pilgrim  Press,  Boston,  1901,  p.  194. 
Also  Winifred  Buck  (Boys'  Self-governing  Clubs,  Macmillan,  New 
York,  1903),  who  thinks  ten  million  dollars  could  be  used  in  training 
club  advisers  who  should  have  the  use  of  schools  and  grounds  after 
hours  and  evenings,  conduct  excursions,  organize  games,  etc.,  but 
avoid  all  direct  teaching  and  book  work  generally.  This  writer  thinks 
such  an  institution  would  soon  result  in  a  marked  increase  of  public 
morality  and  an  augmented  demand  for  technical  instruction,  and 
that  for  the  advisers  themselves  the  work  would  be  the  best  training 
for  high  positions  in  politics  and  reform.  Clubs  of  boys  from  eight  to 
sixteen  or  eighteen  must  not  admit  age  disparities  of  more  than  two 
years. 

230 


THE   GROWTH   OF  SOCIAL   IDEALS 

takes  an  analysis  of  many  such  clubs  which  he  divides 
according  to  their  purpose  into  nine  chief  classes :  physi- 
cal training,  handicraft,  literary,  social,  civic  and  patri- 
otic, science-study,  hero-love,  ethical,  religious.  These  he 
classifies  as  to  age  of  the  boys,  his  purview  generally  end- 
ing at  seventeen ;  discusses  and  tabulates  the  most  favor- 
able number,  the  instincts  chiefly  utilized,  the  kinds  of 
education  gained  in  each  and  its  percentage  of  interest, 
and  the  qualities  developed.  He  commends  Riis's  mode 
of  pulling  the  safety-valve  of  a  rather  dangerous  boy- 
gang  by  becoming  an  adult  honorary  member,  and  inter- 
preting the  impulsions  of  this  age  in  the  direction  of  ad- 
venture instead  of  in  that  of  mischief.  He  reminds  us 
that  nearly  one-third  of  the  inhabitants  of  America  are 
adolescents,  that  3,000,000  are  boys  between  twelve  and 
sixteen,  "  that  the  so-called  heathen  people  are,  what- 
ever their  age,  all  in  the  adolescent  stage  of  life." 

A  few  American  societies  of  this  class  we  may  briefly 
characterize  as  follows: 


(a)  Typical  of  a  large  class  of  local  juvenile  clubs  is  the  '' Cap- 
tains of  Ten/'  originally  for  boys  of  from  eight  to  fourteen,  and  with 
a  later  graduate  squad  of  those  over  fifteen.  The  "Ten"  are  the 
fingers;  and  whittling,  scrap-book  making,  mat- weaving,  etc.,  are 
taught.  The  motto  is,  "  The  hand  of  the  diligent  shall  bear  rule  " ;  its 
watchword  is  "Loyalty";  and  the  prime  objects  are  "to  promote  a 
spirit  of  loyalty  to  Christ  among  the  boys  of  the  club,"  and  to  learn 
about  and  work  for  Christ's  kingdom.  The  members  wear  a  silver 
badge;  have  an  annual  photograph;  elect  their  leaders;  vote  their 
money  to  missions  (on  which  topic  they  hold  meetings);  act  Bible 
stories  in  costume;  hear  stories  and  see  scientific  experiments;  enact 
a  Chinese  school;  write  articles  for  the  children's  department  of  re- 
ligious journals;  develop  comradeship,  and  "have  a  good  time." 

(6)  The  Agassiz  Association,  founded  in  1875  "to  encourage 
personal  work  in  natural  science,"  now  numbers  some  25,000  mem- 
bers, with  chapters  distributed  all  over  the  country,  and  was  said  by 
the  late  Professor  Hyatt  to  include  "the  largest  number  of  persons 
16  231 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

ever  bound  together  for  the  purpose  of  mutual  help  in  the  study  of 
nature."  It  furnishes  practical  courses  of  study  in  the  sciences; 
has  local  chapters  in  thousands  of  towns  and  cities  in  this  and  other 
countries;  publishes  a  monthly  organ,  The  Swiss  Cross,  to  facilitate 
correspondence  and  exchange  of  specimens;  has  a  small  endowment, 
a  badge,  is  incorporated,  and  is  animated  by  a  spirit  akin  to  that  of 
University  Extension;  and,  although  not  exclusively  for  young 
people,  is  chiefly  sustained  by  them. 

(c)  The  Catholic  Total  Abstinence  Union  is  a  strong,  well- 
organized,  and  widely  extended  society,  mostly  composed  of  young 
men.  The  pledge  required  of  all  members  explains  its  object:  "I 
promise,  with  the  Divine  assistance  and  in  honor  of  the  Sacred  Thirst 
and  the  Agony  of  our  Saviour,  to  abstain  from  all  intoxicating  drinks 
and  to  prevent  as  much  as  possible  by  advice  and  example  the  sin 
of  intemperance  in  others  and  to  discountenance  the  drinking  cus- 
toms of  society."  A  general  convention  of  the  Union  has  been  held 
annually  since  1877. 

(d)  The  Princely  Knights  of  Character  Castle  is  an  organiza- 
tion founded  in  1895  for  boys  from  twelve  to  eighteen  to  "inculcate, 
disseminate,  and  practise  the  principles  of  heroism — endurance — 
love,  purity,  and  patriotism."  The  central  incorporated  castle 
grants  charters  to  local  castles,  directs  the  ritual  and  secret  work. 
Its  officers  are  supreme  prince,  patriarch,  scribe,  treasurer,  director, 
with  captain  of  the  guard,  watchman,  porter,  keeper  of  the  dungeon, 
musician,  herald,  and  favorite  son.  The  degrees  of  the  secret  work 
are  shepherd  lad,  captive,  viceroy,  brother,  son,  prince,  knight,  and 
royal  knight.  There  are  jewels,  regalia,  paraphernalia,  and  initia- 
tions. The  pledge  for  the  first  degree  is,  "I  hereby  promise  and 
pledge  that  I  will  abstain  from  the  use  of  intoxicating  liquor  in  any 
form  as  a  beverage ;  that  I  will  not  use  profane  or  improper  language ; 
that  I  will  discourage  the  use  of  tobacco  in  any  form;  that  I  will 
strive  to  live  pure  in  body  and  mind;  that  I  will  obey  all  rules  and 
regulations  of  the  order,  and  not  reveal  any  of  the  secrets  in  any 
way."  There  are  benefits,  reliefs,  passwords,  a  list  of  offenses  and 
penalties. 

(e)  Some  35,000  Bands  of  Mercy  are  now  organized  under  the 
direction  of  the  American  Humane  Education  Society.  The  object 
of  the  organization  is  to  cultivate  kindness  to  animals  and  sympathy 
with  the  poor  and  oppressed.  The  prevention  of  cruelty  in  driving, 
cattle  transportation,  humane  methods  of  killing,  care  for  the  sick 
and  abandoned  or  overworked  animals,  are  the  themes  of  most  of  its 
voluminous  literature.  It  has  badges,  hymn-books,  cards,  and 
certificates  of  membership,  and  a  motto,  "Kindness,  Justice,  and 

232 


THE   GROWTH   OF  SOCIAL   IDEALS 

Mercy  to  All."  Its  pledge  is,  "I  will  try  to  be  kind  to  all  harmless 
living  creatures,  and  try  to  protect  them  from  cruel  usage,"  and  is 
intended  to  include  human  as  well  as  dumb  creatures.  The  founder 
and  secretary,  with  great  and  commendable  energy,  has  instituted 
prize  contests  for  speaking  on  humane  subjects  in  schools,  and  has 
printed  and  circulated  prize  stories;  since  the  incorporation  of  the 
society  in  1868,  he  has  been  indefatigable  in  collecting  funds,  speak- 
ing before  schools  and  colleges,  and  prints  fifty  to  sixty  thousand 
copies  of  the  monthly  organ.  In  addition  to  its  mission  of  sentiment, 
and  to  make  it  more  effective,  this  organization  clearly  needs  to 
make  more  provision  for  the  intellectual  element  by  well-selected  or 
constructed  courses,  or  at  least  references  on  the  life,  history-,  habits, 
and  instincts  of  animals,  and  it  also  needs  more  recognition  that 
modern  charity  is  a  science  as  well  as  a  virtue. 

(/)  The  Coming  Men  of  America,  although  organized  only  in 
1894,  now  claims  to  be  the  greatest  chartered  secret  society  for  boys 
and  young  men  in  the  country.  It  began  two  years  earlier  in  a 
lodge  started  by  a  nineteen-year-old  boy  in  Chicago  in  imitation  of 
such  ideas  of  Masons,  Odd-Fellows,  etc.,  as  its  founder  could  get 
from  his  older  brother,  and  its  meetings  were  first  held  in  a  base- 
ment. On  this  basis  older  heads  aided  in  its  development,  so  that 
it  is  a  good  example  of  the  boy-imitative  helped  out  by  parents.  The 
organization  is  now  represented  in  every  State  and  Territory,  and 
boys  travel  on  its  badge.  There  is  an  official  organ,  The  Star,  a 
badge,  sign,  and  a  secret  sign  language  called  '' bestography."  Its 
secret  ritual  work  is  highly  praised.  Its  membership  is  limited  to 
white  boys  under  twenty-one. 

(g)  The  first  Harry  Wads  worth  Club  was  established  in  1871 
as  a  result  of  E.  E.  Hale's  Ten  Times  One,  published  the  year  before. 
Its  motto  is,  "Look  up,  and  not  down;  look  forward,  and  not  back; 
look  out,  and  not  in;  lend  a  hand,"  or  "Faith,  Hope,  and  Charity." 
Its  organ  is  the  Ten  Times  One  Record;  its  badge  is  a  silver  Maltese 
cross.  Each  club  may  organize  as  it  will,  and  choose  its  own  name, 
provided  it  accepts  the  above  motto.  Its  watchword  is,  "In  His 
Name."  It  distributes  charities,  conducts  a  Noonday  Rest,  outings 
in  the  country,  and  devotes  itself  to  doing  good.  ^ 

^  See  Young  People's  Societies,  by  L.  W.  Bacon.  D.  Appleton  and 
Co.,  New  York,  1900,  p.  265.  Also,  F.  G.  Cressey:  The  Church  and 
Young  Men.     Fleming  H.  Revell  Co.,  New  York,  1903,  p.  233. 


233 


CHAPTER   X 

INTELLECTUAL   EDUCATION   AND    SCHOOL   WORK 

The  general  change  and  plasticity  at  puberty — English  teaching — Causes 
of  its  failure:  (1)  too  much  time  to  other  languages,  (2)  subordination 
of  literary  content  to  form,  (3)  too  early  stress  on  eye  and  hand  in- 
stead of  ear  and  mouth,  (4)  excessive  use  of  concrete  words — Chil- 
dren's interest  in  words — Their  favorites — Slang — Story  telling — Age 
of  reading  crazes — What  to  read — The  historic  sense — Growth  of 
memory  span. 

Just  as  about  the  only  duty  of  young  children  is 
implicit  obedience,  so  the  chief  mental  training  from 
about  eight  to  twelve  is  arbitrary  memorization,  drill, 
habituation,  with  only  limited  appeal  to  the  understand- 
ing. After  the  critical  transition  age  of  six  or  seven, 
when  the  brain  has  achieved  its  adult  size  and  weight, 
and  teething  has  reduced  the  chewing  surface  to  its 
least  extent,  begins  a  unique  stage  of  life  marked  by 
reduced  growth  and  increased  activity  and  power  to 
resist  both  disease  and  fatigue,  which  suggests  what 
was,  in  some  just  post-simian  age  of  our  race,  its  period 
of  maturity.  Here  belong  discipline  in  writing,  read- 
ing, spelling,  verbal  memory,  manual  training,  practise 
of  instrumental  technic,  proper  names,  drawing,  drill 
in  arithmetic,  foreign  languages  by  oral  methods,  the 
correct  pronunciation  of  which  is  far  harder  if  acquired 
later,  etc.  The  hand  is  never  so  near  the  brain.  Most 
of  the  content  of  the  mind  has  entered  it  through  the 
senses,  and  the  eye-  and  ear-gates  should  be  open  at  their 
widest.    Authority  should  now  take  precedence  of  rea- 

234 


INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION   AND  SCHOOL  WORK 

son.  Children  comprehend  much  and  very  rapidly  if 
we  can  only  refrain  from  explaining,  but  this  slows  down 
intuition,  tends  to  make  casuists  and  prigs  and  to  en- 
feeble the  ultimate  vigor  of  reason.  It  is  the  age  of 
little  method  and  much  matter.  The  good  teacher  is 
now  a  pedotrieh,  or  boy-driver.  Boys  of  this  age  are 
now  not  very  affectionate.  They  take  pleasure  in 
obliging  and  imitating  those  they  like  and  perhaps  in 
disobliging  those  they  dislike.  They  have  much  sel- 
fishness and  little  sentiment.  As  this  period  draws  to  a 
close  and  the  teens  begin,  the  average  normal  child  will 
not  be  bookish  but  should  read  and  write  well,  know  a 
few  dozen  well-chosen  books,  play  several  dozen  games, 
be  well  started  in  one  or  more  ancient  and  modern  lan- 
guages— if  these  must  be  studied  at  all,  should  know 
something  of  several  industries  and  how  to  make  many 
things  he  is  interested  in,  belong  to  a  few  teams  and 
societies,  know  much  about  nature  in  his  environment, 
be  able  to  sing  and  draw,  should  have  memorized  much 
more  than  he  now  does,  and  be  acquainted,  at  least 
in  story  form,  with  the  outlines  of  many  of  the  best 
works  in  literature  and  the  epochs  and  persons  in  his- 
tory.^ Morally  he  should  have  been  through  many 
if  not  most  forms  of  what  parents  and  teachers  com- 
monly call  "  badness,"  and  Professor  Yoder  even  calls 
' '  meanness. ' '  He  should  have  fought,  whipped  and  been 
whipped,  used  language  offensive  to  the  prude  and  to 
the  prim  precisian,  been  in  some  scrapes,  had  something 
to  do  with  bad,  if  more  with  good,  associates,  and  been 
exposed  to  and  already  recovering  from  as  many  forms 
of  ethical  mumps  and  measles  as,  by  having  in  mild 
form  now  he  can  be  rendered  immune  to  later  when 

1  See  my  Ideal  School  as  Based  on  Child  Studj^     Proceedings  of  the 
National  Educational  Association,  1901,  pp.  475-490. 

235 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

they  become  far  more  dangerous,  because  his  moral  and 
religious  as  well  as  his  rational  nature  is  normally 
rudimentary.  He  is  not  depraved,  but  only  in  a  savage 
or  half-animal  stage,  although  to  a  large-brained,  large- 
hearted  and  truly  parental  soul  that  does  not  call  what 
causes  it  inconvenience  by  opprobrious  names,  an  al- 
together lovable  and  even  fascinating  stage.  The  more 
we  know  of  boyhood  the  more  narrow  and  often  selfish 
do  adult  ideals  of  it  appear.  Something  is  amiss  with 
the  lad  of  ten  who  is  very  good,  studious,  industrious, 
thoughtful,  altruistic,  quiet,  polite,  respectful,  obedient, 
gentlemanly,  orderly,  always  in  good  toilet,  docile  to 
reason,  who  turns  away  from  stories  that  reek  with  gore, 
prefers  adult  companionship  to  that  of  his  mates,  re- 
fuses all  low  associates,  speaks  standard  English,  or  is 
as  pious  and  deeply  in  love  with  religious  services  as  the 
typical  maiden  teacher  or  the  a  la  mode  parent  wishes. 
Such  a  boy  is  either  under-vitalized  and  anemic  and 
precocious  by  nature,  a  repressed,  overtrained,  conven- 
tionalized manikin,  a  hypocrite,  as  some  can  become 
under  pressure  thus  early  in  life,  or  else  a  genius  of 
some  kind  with  a  little  of  all  these. 

But  with  the  teens  all  this  begins  to  be  changed  and 
many  of  these  precepts  must  be  gradually  reversed. 
There  is  an  outburst  of  growth  that  needs  a  large  part 
of  the  total  kinetic  energy  of  the  body.  There  is  a 
new  interest  in  adults,  a  passion  to  be  treated  like  one's 
elders,  to  make  plans  for  the  future,  a  new  sensitive- 
ness to  adult  praise  or  blame.  The  large  muscles  have 
their  innings  and  there  is  a  new  clumsiness  of  body  and 
mind.  The  blood-vessels  expand  and  blushing  is  in- 
creased, new  sensations  and  feelings  arise,  the  imagina- 
tion blossoms,  love  of  nature  is  born,  music  is  felt  in 
a  new,   more   inward   way,   fatigue   comes   easier   and 

236 


INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION   AND  SCHOOL  WORK 

sooner ;  and  if  heredity  and  environment  enable  the  in- 
dividual to  cross  this  bridge  successfully  there  is  some- 
times almost  a  break  of  continuity,  and  a  new  being 
emerges.  The  drill  methods  of  the  preceding  period 
must  be  slowly  relaxed  and  new  appeals  made  to  free- 
dom and  interest.  We  can  no  longer  coerce  a  break, 
but  must  lead  and  inspire  if  we  would  avoid  arrest. 
Individuality  must  have  a  longer  tether.  Never  is  the 
power  to  appreciate  so  far  ahead  of  the  power  to  ex- 
press, and  never  does  understanding  so  outstrip  ability 
to  explain.  Overaccuracy  is  atrophy.  Both  mental  and 
moral  acquisition  sink  at  once  too  deep  to  be  repro- 
duced by  examination  without  injury  both  to  intellect 
and  will.  There  is  nothing  in  the  environment  to 
which  the  adolescent  nature  does  not  keenly  respond. 
With  pedagogic  tact  we  can  teach  about  everything  we 
know  that  is  really  worth  knowing;  but  if  we  amplify 
and  morselize  instead  of  giving  great  wholes,  if  we  let 
the  hammer  that  strikes  the  bell  rest  too  long  against 
it  and  deaden  the  sound,  and  if  we  wait  before  each 
methodic  step  till  the  pupil  has  reproduced  all  the  last, 
we  starve  and  retard  the  soul,  which  is  now  all  insight 
and  receptivity.  Plasticity  is  at  its  maximum,  utter- 
ance at  its  minimum.  The  inward  traffic  obstructs  the 
outer  currents.  Boys  especially  are  often  dumb-bound, 
monophrastic,  inarticulate,  and  semi-aphasic  save  in 
their  own  vigorous  and  inelegant  way.  Nature  prompts 
to  a  modest  reticence  for  which  the  deflowerers  of  all 
ephebic  naivete  should  have  some  respect.  Deep  in- 
terests arise  which  are  almost  as  sacred  as  is  the  hour 
of  visitation  of  the  Holy  Ghost  to  the  religious  teacher. 
The  mind  at  times  grows  in  leaps  and  bounds  in  a  way 
that  seems  to  defy  the  great  enemy,  fatigue;  and  yet 
when  the  teacher  grows  a  little  tiresome  the  pupil  is 

237 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

tired  in  a  moment.  Thus  we  have  the  converse  danger 
of  forcing  knowledge  upon  unwilling  and  unripe  minds 
that  have  no  love  for  it,  which  is  in  many  ways  psy- 
chologically akin  to  a  nameless  crime  that  in  some  parts 
of  the  country  meets  summary  vengeance. 

(A)  The  heart  of  education  as  well  as  its  phyletic 
root  is  the  vernacular  literature  and  language.  These 
are  the  chief  instruments  of  the  social  as  well  as  of  the 
ethnic  and  patriotic  instinct.  The  prime  place  of  the 
former  we  saw  in  the  last  chapter,  and  we  now  pass  to 
the  latter,  the  uniqueness  of  which  should  first  be  con- 
sidered. 

The  Century,  the  largest  complete  dictionary  of  English,  claims 
to  have  250,000  words,  as  against  55,000  in  the  old  Webster's  Un- 
abridged. Worcester's  Unabridged  of  1860  has  105,000;  Murray's, 
now  in  L,  it  is  said,  will  contain  240,000  principal  and  140,000  com- 
pound words,  or  380,000  words  in  all.  The  dictionary  of  the  French 
Academy  has  33,000;  that  of  the  Royal  Spanish  Academy,  50,000; 
the  Dutch  dictionary  of  Van  Dale,  86,000;  the  Italian  and  Portuguese, 
each  about  50,000  literary,  or  150,000  encyclopedic  words.  Of  course, 
words  can  reaUy  be  counted  hardly  more  than  ideas  or  impressions, 
and  compounds,  dialects,  obsolete  terms,  localisms,  and  especially 
technical  terms,  swell  the  number  indefinitely.  A  competent  phi- 
lologist ^  says,  if  given  large  liberty,  he  "will  undertake  to  supply 
1 ,000,000  English  words  for  1 ,000,000  American  dollars."  Chamber- 
lain 2  estimates  that  our  language  contains  more  than  two  score 
as  many  words  as  all  those  left  us  from  the  Latin.  Many  savage 
languages  contain  only  a  very  few  thousand,  and  some  but  a  few 
hundred,  words.  Our  tongue  is  essentially  Saxon  in  its  vocabulary 
and  its  spirit  and,  from  the  time  when  it  was  despised  and  vulgar, 
has  followed  an  expansion  policy,  swallowing  with  little  modification 
terms  not  only  from  classical  antiquity,  but  from  all  modern  languages 
— Indian,  African,  Chinese,  Mongolian — according  to  its  needs,  its 

1  Charles  P.  G.  Scott:  The  Number  of  Words  in  the  English  and  Other 
Languages.  Princeton  University  Bulletin,  May,  1902,  vol.  13,  pp. 
106-111. 

2  The  Teaching  of  English.  Pedagogical  Seminary,  June,  1902, 
vol.  9,  pp.  161-lGS. 

238 


INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION   AND  SCHOOL  WORK 

adopted  children  far  outnumbering  those  of  its  own  blood.  It 
absorbs  at  its  will  the  slang  of  the  street  gamin,  the  cant  of  thieves 
and  beggars;  is  actually  creative  in  the  baby  talk  of  mothers  and 
nurses;  drops,  forgets,  and  actually  invents  new  words  with  no  pedi- 
gree like  those  of  Lear,  Carrol,  and  many  others.^ 

In  this  vast  field  the  mind  of  the  child  early  begins  to  take  flight. 
Here  his  soul  finds  its  native  breath  and  vital  air.  He  may  live  as  a 
peasant,  using,  as  Max  Miiller  says  many  do,  but  a  few  hundred  words 
during  his  lifetime;  or  he  may  need  8,000,  like  Milton,  15,000,  like 
Shakespeare,  20,000  or  30,000,  hke  Huxley,  who  commanded  both 
literary  and  technical  terms;  while  in  understanding,  which  far  out- 
strips use,  a  philologist  may  master  perhaps  100,000  or  200,000  words. 
The  content  of  a  tongue  may  contain  only  folk-lore  and  terms  for 
immediate,  practical  life,  or  this  content  may  be  indefinitely  elabor- 
ated in  a  rich  literature  and  science.  The  former  is  generally  well  on 
in  its  development  before  speech  itself  becomes  an  object  of  study. 
Greek  literature  was  fully  grown  when  the  Sophists,  and  finally 
Aristotle,  developed  the  rudiments  of  grammar,  the  parts  of  speech 
being  at  first  closely  related  with  his  ten  metaphysical  categories. 
Our  modern  tongue  had  the  fortune,  unknown  to  those  of  antiquity, 
when  it  was  crude  and  despised,  to  be  patronized  and  regulated  by 
Latin  grammarians,  and  has  had  a  long  experience,  both  for  good 
and  evil,  with  their  conserving  and  uniformitizing  instincts.  It  has, 
too,  a  long  history  of  resistance  to  this  control.  Once  spelling  was  a 
matter  of  fashion  or  even  individual  taste;  and  as  the  constraint 
grew,  two  pedagogues  in  the  thirteenth  century  fought  a  duel  for  the 
right  spelling  of  the  word,  and  that  maintained  by  the  survivor 
prevailed.  Phonic  and  economic  influences  are  now  again  making 
some  headway  against  orthographic  orthodoxy  here;  so  with  defini- 
tions. In  the  days  of  Johnson's  dictionary,  individuality  still  had 
wide  range  in  determining  meanings.  In  pronunciation,  too:  we 
may  now  pronounce  the  word  tomato  in  six  ways,  all  sanctioned  by 
dictionaries.  Of  our  tongue  in  particular  it  is  true,  as  Tylor  says 
in  general,  condensing  a  longer  passage,  "take  language  all  in  all,  it 
is  the  product  of  a  rough-and-ready  ingenuity  and  of  the  great  rule 
of  thumb.  It  is  an  old  barbaric  engine,  which  in  its  highest  develop- 
ment is  altered,  patched,  and  tinkered  into  capability.  It  is  originally 
and  naturally  a  product  of  low  culture,  developed  by  ages  of  con- 
scious and  unconscious  improvement  to  answer  more  or  less  per- 
fectly the  requirements  of  modern  civilization." 

1  See  my  Some  Aspects  of  the  Early  Sense  of  Self.  American 
Journal  of  Psychology,  April,  1898,  vol.  9,  pp.  351-395. 

239 


YOUTH  :  ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

It  is  plain,  therefore,  that  no  grammar,  and  least 
of  all  that  derived  from  the  prim,  meager  Latin  con- 
tingent of  it,  is  adequate  to  legislate  for  the  free  spirit 
of  our  magnificent  tongue.  Again,  if  this  is  ever  done 
and  English  ever  has  a  grammar  that  is  to  it  what  Latin 
grammar  is  to  that  language,  it  will  only  be  when  the 
psychology  of  speech  represented,  e.  g.,  in  Wundt's 
Psychologic  der  Sprache,^  which  is  now  compiling  and 
organizing  the  best  elements  from  all  grammars,  is  com- 
plete. The  reason  why  English  speakers  find  such  diffi- 
culty in  learning  other  languages  is  because  ours  has 
so  far  outgrown  them  by  throwing  off  not  only  inflec- 
tions but  many  old  rules  of  syntax,  that  we  have  had  to 
go  backward  to  an  earlier  and  more  obsolescent  stage 
of  human  development.  In  1414,  at  the  Council  of 
Constance,  when  Emperor  Sigismund  was  rebuked  for 
a  wrong  gender,  he  replied,  * '  I  am  King  of  the  Romans 
and  above  grammar."  Thomas  Jefferson  later  wrote, 
''  Where  strictness  of  grammar  does  not  weaken  ex- 
pression it  should  be  attended  to ;  but  where  by  a  small 
grammatical  negligence  the  energy  of  an  idea  is  con- 
densed or  a  word  stands  for  a  sentence,  I  hold  gram- 
matical rigor  in  contempt."  Browning,  Whitman,  and 
Kipling  deliberately  violate  grammar  and  secure  thereby 
unique  effects  neither  asking  nor  needing  excuse. 

By  general  consent  both  high  school  and  college 
youth  in  this  country  are  in  an  advanced  stage  of  de- 
generation in  the  command  of  this  the  world's  greatest 
organ  of  the  intellect;  and  that,  despite  the  fact  that 
the  study  of  English  often  continues  from  primary 
into  college  grades,  that  no  topic  counts  for  more,  and 

1  Sprachgeschichte  und  Sprachpsychologie,  mit  Riicksicht  auf  B. 
Delbriick's  "  Grundfragen  der  Sprachforschung."  Leipzig,  W.  Engel- 
mann,  1901. 

240 


INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION  AND  SCHOOL   WORK 

that  marked  deficiency  here  often  debars  from  all  other 
courses.  Every  careful  study  of  the  subject  for  nearly 
twenty  years  shows  deterioration,  and  Professor  Shur- 
man,  of  Nebraska,  thinks  it  now  worse  than  at  any 
time  for  forty  years.  We  are  in  the  case  of  many 
Christians  described  by  Dante  who  strove  by  prayers 
to  get  nearer  to  God  when  in  fact  with  every  petition 
they  were  departing  farther  from  him.  Such  a  compre- 
hensive fact  must  have  many  causes. 

I.  One  of  these  is  the  excessive  time  given  to  other 
languages  just  at  the  psychological  period  of  greatest 
linguistic  plasticity  and  capacity  for  growth.  School 
invention  and  tradition  is  so  inveterate  that  it  is  hard 
for  us  to  understand  that  there  is  little  educational 
value — and  perhaps  it  is  deeducational — to  learn  to  tell 
the  time  of  day  or  name  a  spade  in  several  different 
tongues  or  to  learn  to  say  the  Lord's  Prayer  in  many 
different  languages,  any  one  of  which  the  Lord  only 
can  understand.  The  polyglot  people  that  one  meets 
on  great  international  highways  of  travel  are  linguists 
only  in  the  sense  that  the  moke  on  the  variety  stage  who 
plays  a  dozen  instruments  equally  badly  is  a  musician. 
It  is  a  psychological  impossibility  to  pass  through  the 
apprenticeship  stage  of  learning  foreign  languages  at 
the  age  when  the  vernacular  is  setting  without  crippling 
it.  The  extremes  are  the  youth  in  ancient  Greece  study- 
ing his  own  language  only  and  the  modern  high  school 
boy  and  girl  dabbling  in  three  or  perhaps  four  lan- 
guages. Latin,  which  in  the  eight  years  preceding  1898 
increased  one  hundred  and  seventy-four  per  cent  in 
American  high  schools,  while  the  proportion  entering 
college  in  the  country  and  even  in  Massachusetts  steadily 
declined,  is  the  chief  offender.  In  the  day  of  its  peda- 
gogical glory  Latin  was  the  universal  tongue  of  the 

241 


YOUTH:    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

learned.  Sturm's  idea  was  to  train  boys  so  that  if  sud- 
denly transported  to  ancient  Rome  or  Greece  they  would 
be  at  home  there.  Language,  it  was  said,  was  the  chief 
instrument  of  culture;  Latin,  the  chief  language  and 
therefore  a  better  drill  in  the  vernacular  than  the  ver- 
nacular itself.  Its  rules  were  wholesome  swathing  bands 
for  the  modern  languages  when  in  their  infancy.  Boys 
must  speak  only  Latin  on  the  playground.  They 
thought,  felt,  and  developed  an  intellectual  life  in  and 
with  that  tongue.^  But  how  changed  all  this  is  now. 
Statistical  studies  show  that  five  hours  a  week  for  a 
year  gives  command  of  but  a  few  hundred  words,  that 
two  years  does  not  double  this  number,  and  that  com- 
mand of  the  language  and  its  resources  in  the  original 
is  almost  never  attained,  but  that  it  is  abandoned  not 
only  by  the  increasing  percentage  that  do  not  go  to 
college  but  also  by  the  increasing  percentage  who  drop 
it  forever  at  the  college  door.  Its  enormous  numerical 
increase  due  to  high  school  requirements,  the  increas- 
ing percentage  of  girl  pupils  more  ready  to  follow  the 
teacher's  advice,  in  connection  with  the  deteriorating 
quality  of  the  girls — inevitable  with  their  increasing 
numbers,  the  sense  that  Latin  means  entering  upon  a 
higher  education,  the  special  reverence  for  it  by  Catho- 
lic children,  the  overcrowded  market  for  Latin  teachers 
whom  a  recent  writer  says  can  be  procured  by  the  score 
at  less  rates  than  in  almost  any  other  subject,  the  mod- 
ern methods  of  teaching  it  which  work  well  with  less 
knowledge  of  it  by  the  teacher  than  in  the  case  of 
other  school  topics,  have  been  attended  perhaps  in- 
evitably by  steady  pedagogic  decline  despite  the  vaunted 
new  methods;  until  now  the  baby  Latin  in  the  average 

1  Latin  in  the  High  School.     By  Edward  Conradi.     Pedagogical  Semi- 
nary, March,  1905,  vol.  12,  pp.  1-26. 

242 


INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION  AND  SCHOOL  WORK 

high  school  class  is  a  kind  of  sanctified  relic,  a  ghost 
of  a  ghost,  suggesting  Swift's  Struldbrugs,  doomed  to 
physical  immortality  but  shriveling  and  with  increasing 
horror  of  all  things  new.  In  1892  the  German  emperor 
declared  it  a  shame  for  a  boy  to  excel  in  Latin  com- 
position, and  in  the  high  schools  of  Sweden  and  Norway 
it  has  been  practically  abandoned.  In  the  present  stage 
of  its  educational  decadence  the  power  of  the  dead  hand 
is  strongly  illustrated  by  the  new  installation  of  the  old 
Roman  pronunciation  with  which  our  tongue  has  only 
remote  analogies,  which  makes  havoc  with  proper 
names,  which  is  unknown  and  unrecognized  in  the 
schools  of  the  European  continent,  and  which  makes  a 
pedantic  affectation  out  of  mere  vocalism.  I  do  not 
know  nor  care  whether  the  old  Romans  pronounced 
thus  or  not,  but  if  historic  fidelity  in  this  sense  has 
pedagogic  justification,  why  still  teach  a  text  like  the 
Viri  Romce,  which  is  not  a  classic  but  a  modern  peda- 
gogue's composition? 

I  believe  profoundly  in  the  Latin  both  as  a  university  specialty 
and  for  all  students  who  even  approach  mastery,  but  for  the  vast 
numbers  who  stop  in  the  early  stages  of  proficiency  it  is  disastrous 
to  the  vernacular.  Compare  the  evils  of  translation  English,  which 
not  even  the  most  competent  and  laborious  teaching  can  wholly 
prevent  and  which  careless  mechanical  instruction  directly  fosters, 
with  the  vigorous  fresh  productions  of  a  boy  or  girl  writing  or  speak- 
ing of  something  of  vital  present  interest.  The  psychology  of  trans- 
lation shows  that  it  gives  the  novice  a  consciousness  of  etymologies 
which  rather  impedes  than  helps  the  free  movement  of  the  mind. 
Jowett  said  in  substance  that  it  is  almost  impossible  to  render  either 
of  the  great  dead  languages  into  English  without  compromise,  and 
this  tends  to  injure  the  idiomatic  mastery  of  one's  own  tongue,  which 
can  be  got  only  by  much  hard  experience  in  uttering  our  own  thoughts 
before  trying  to  shape  the  dead  thoughts  of  others  into  our  language. 
We  confound  the  little  knowledge  of  word-histories  which  Latin 
gives  with  the  far  higher  and  subtler  sentence-sense  which  makes 
the  soul  of  one  language  so  different  from  that  of  another,  and  train- 

243 


YOUTH  :  ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

ing  in  which  ought  not  to  end  until  one  has  become  more  or  less  of  a 
stylist  and  knows  how  to  hew  out  modes  of  expressing  his  own  in- 
dividuality in  a  great  language.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  Macaulay 
was  not  an  Englishman  at  all,  but  a  Ciceronian  Latinist  who  foisted 
an  alien  style  upon  our  tongue ;  and  even  Addison  is  a  foreigner  com- 
pared to  the  virile  Kipling.  The  nature  and  needs  of  the  adolescent 
mind  demand  bread  and  meat,  while  Latin  rudiments  are  husks. 
In  his  autobiography,  Booker  Washington  says  that  for  ten  years 
after  their  emancipation,  the  two  chief  ambitions  of  the  young  negro 
of  the  South  were  to  hold  ofRce  and  to  study  Latin,  and  he  adds  that 
the  chief  endeavor  of  his  life  has  been  against  these  tendencies.  For 
the  American  boy  and  girl,  high  school  too  often  means  Latin.  This 
gives  at  first  a  pleasing  sense  of  exaltation  to  a  higher  stage  of  life, 
but  after  from  one  to  three  years  the  great  majority  who  enter  the 
high  school  drop  out  limp  and  discouraged  for  many  reasons,  largely, 
however,  because  they  are  not  fed.  Recent  studies  of  truancy  have 
shown  a  strong  but  strangely  unconscious  association  between  run- 
aways and  a  bad  dietary  at  home.  Defective  nutrition  of  the  mind 
also  causes  a  restlessness,  which  enhances  all  the  influences  which 
make  boys  and  girls  leave  school. 

II.  The  second  cause  of  this  degeneration  is  the 
subordination  of  literature  and  content  to  language 
study.  Grammar  arises  in  the  old  age  of  language.  As 
once  applied  to  our  relatively  grammarless  tongue  it 
always  was  more  or  less  of  a  school-made  artifact  and 
an  alien  yoke,  and  has  become  increasingly  so  as  English 
has  grown  great  and  free.  Its  ghost,  in  the  many  text- 
books devoted  to  it,  lacks  just  the  quality  of  logic  which 
made  and  besouled  it.  Philology,  too,  with  all  its  mag- 
nificence, is  not  a  product  of  the  nascent  stages  of 
speech.  In  the  college,  which  is  its  stronghold,  it  has 
so  inspired  professors  of  English  that  their  ideal  is  to 
be  critical  rather  than  creative  till  they  prefer  the 
minute  reading  of  a  few  masterpieces  to  a  wide  gen- 
eral knowledge,  and  a  typical  university  announces  that 
* '  in  every  case  the  examiners  will  treat  mere  knowledge 
of  books  as  less  important  than  the  ability  to  write  good 

244 


INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION   AND  SCHOOL   WORK 

.  English  ' '  that  will  parse  and  that  is  spelled,  punctuated, 
capitalized,  and  paragraphed  aright.  Good  professors 
of  English  literature  are  hard  to  find,  and  upon  them 
philologists,  who  are  plentiful,  look  w^ith  a  certain  con- 
descension. ]\Iany  academic  chairs  of  English  are  filled 
by  men  whose  acquaintance  of  our  literature  is  very 
narrow,  who  wish  to  be  linguistic  and  not  literary,  and 
this  is  true  even  in  ancient  tongues. 

At  a  brilliant  examination,  a  candidate  for  the  doctor's  degree 
who  had  answered  many  questions  concerning  the  forms  of  Lucretius, 
when  asked  whether  he  was  a  dramatist,  historian,  poet,  or  phi- 
losopher, did  not  know,  and  his  professor  deemed  the  question  im- 
proper. I  visited  the  eleventh  recitation  in  Othello  in  a  high  school 
class  of  nineteen  pupils,  not  one  of  whom  knew  how  the  story  ended, 
so  intent  had  they  been  kept  on  its  verbiage.  Hence,  too,  has  come 
the  twelve  feet  of  text-books  on  English  on  my  shelves  with  many 
standard  works,  edited  for  schools,  wath  more  notes  than  text. 
Fashion  that  works  from  above  down  the  grades  and  college  entrance 
requirements  are  in  large  measure  responsible  for  this,  perhaps  now 
the  worst  case  of  the  prostitution  of  content  to  form. 

Long  exposure  to  this  method  of  linguistic  manicuring  tends  to 
make  students  who  try  to  write  ultra-fastidiously,  seeking  an  over- 
refined  elaboration  of  petty  trifles,  as  if  the  less  the  content  the 
greater  the  triumph  of  form  alone  could  be.  These  petty  but  pretty 
nothings  are  like  German  confectionery,  that  appeals  to  the  eye  but 
has  little  for  taste  and  is  worse  than  nothing  for  the  digestion.  It  is 
like  straining  work  on  an  empty  stomach.  For  youth  this  em- 
broidery of  details  is  the  precocious  senescence  that  Nordau  has  so 
copiously  illustrated  as  literary  decadence.  Language  is  vastly 
larger  than  all  its  content,  and  the  way  to  teach  it  is  to  focus  the 
mind  upon  story,  history,  oratory,  drama,  Bible,  for  their  esthetic, 
mental,  and  above  all,  moral  content,  as  shown  in  the  last  chapter. 
The  more  unconscious  processes  that  reflect  imitatively  the  linguistic 
environment  and  that  strike  out  intuitively  oral  and  written  vents 
for  interests  so  intense  that  they  must  be  told  and  shared,  are  what 
teach  us  how  to  command  the  resources  of  our  mother  tongue. 
These  prescriptions  and  corrections  and  consciousness  of  the  mani- 
fold ways  of  error  are  never  so  peculiarly  liable  to  hinder  rather  than 
to  help  as  in  early  adolescence,  when  the  soul  has  a  new  content 
and  a  new  sense  for  it,  and  so  abhors  and  is  so  incapable  of  precision 

245 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

and  propriety  of  diction.  To  hold  up  the  flights  of  exuberant  youth 
by  forever  being  on  the  hunt  for  errors  is,  to  borrow  the  language  of 
the  gridiron,  low  tackle,  and  I  would  rather  be  convicted  of  many 
errors  by  such  methods  than  use  them.  Of  course  this  has  its 
place,  but  it  must  always  be  subordinated  to  a  larger  view,  as  in  one 
of  the  newly  discovered  logia  ascribed  to  Jesus,  who,  when  he  found 
a  man  gathering  sticks  on  Sunday,  said  to  him,  ''If  you  understand 
what  you  are  doing,  it  is  well,  but  if  not,  thou  shalt  be  damned." 
The  great  teacher  who,  when  asked  how  he  obtained  such  rare 
results  in  expression,  answered,  ''By  carefully  neglecting  it  and 
seeking  utter  absorption  in  subject-matter,"  was  also  a  good  prac- 
tical psychologist.  This  is  the  inveterate  tendency  that  in  other  ages 
has  made  pedagogic  scribes,  Talmudists,  epigoni,  and  sophists,  who 
have  magnified  the  letter  and  lost  the  spirit.  But  there  are  yet 
other  seats  of  difficulty. 

III.  It  is  hard  and,  in  the  history  of  the  race,  a 
late  change,  to  receive  language  through  the  eye  which 
reads  instead  of  through  the  ear  which  hears.  Not 
only  is  perception  measurably  quite  distinctly  slower, 
but  book  language  is  related  to  oral  speech  somewhat 
as  an  herbarium  is  to  a  garden,  or  a  museum  of  stuffed 
specimens  to  a  menagerie.  The  invention  of  letters 
is  a  novelty  in  the  history  of  the  race  that  spoke  for 
countless  ages  before  it  wrote.  The  winged  word  of 
mouth  is  saturated  with  color,  perhaps  hot  with  feeling, 
musical  with  inflection,  is  the  utterance  of  a  living 
present  personality,  the  consummation  of  man's  gre- 
garious instincts.  The  book  is  dead  and  more  or  less 
impersonal,  best  apprehended  in  solitude,  its  matter 
more  intellectualized ;  it  deals  in  remoter  second-hand 
knowledge  so  that  Plato  reproached  Aristotle  as  being 
a  reader,  one  remove  from  the  first  spontaneous  source 
of  original  impressions  and  ideas,  and  the  doughty 
medieval  knights  scorned  reading  as  a  mere  clerk's  trick, 
not  wishing  to  muddle  their  wits  with  other  people's 
ideas  when  their  own  were  good  enough  for  them.    But 

246 


INTELLECTUAL   EDUCATION   AND  SCHOOL  WORK  • 

although  some  of  the  great  men  in  history  could  not 
read,  and  though  some  of  the  illiterate  were  often  mor- 
ally and  intellectually  above  some  of  the  literate,  the 
argument  here  is  that  the  printed  page  must  not  be  too 
suddenly  or  too  early  thrust  between  the  child  and  life. 
The  plea  is  for  more  oral  and  objective  work,  more 
stories,  narratives,  and  even  vivid  readings,  as  is  now 
done  statedly  in  more  than  a  dozen  of  the  public  li- 
braries of  the  country,  not  so  often  by  teachers  as  by 
librarians,  all  to  the  end  that  the  ear,  the  chief 
receptacle  of  language,  be  maintained  in  its  dominance, 
that  the  fine  sense  of  sound,  rhythm,  cadence,  pro- 
nunciation, and  speech-music  generally  be  not  atrophied, 
that  the  eye  which  normally  ranges  freely  from  far  to 
near  be  not  injured  by  the  confined  treadmill  and  zigzag 
of  the  printed  page. 

Closely  connected  with  this,  and  perhaps  psychologi- 
cally w^orse,  is  the  substitution  of  the  pen  and  the 
scribbling  fingers  for  the  mouth  and  tongue.  Speech 
is  directly  to  and  from  the  soul.  Writing,  the  delib- 
eration of  which  fits  age  better  than  youth,  slows  do^vn 
its  impetuosity  many  fold,  and  is  in  every  way  farther 
removed  from  vocal  utterance  than  is  the  eye  from  the 
ear.  Never  have  there  been  so  many  pounds  of  paper, 
so  many  pencils,  and  such  excessive  scribbling  as  in  the 
calamopapyrus  ^  pedagogy  of  to-day  and  in  this  country. 
Not  only  has  the  daily  theme  spread  as  an  infection, 
but  the  daily  lesson  is  now  extracted  through  the  point 
of  a  pencil  instead  of  from  the  mouth.  The  tongue 
rests  and  the  curve  of  writer's  cramp  takes  a  sharp 
turn  upward,  as  if  we  were  making  scribes,  reporters, 
and  proof-readers.     In  some  schools,  teachers  seem  to 

1  Pen-paper. 

17  247 


YOUTH :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

be  conducting  correspondence  classes  with  their  own 
pupils.  It  all  makes  excellent  busy  work,  keeps  the 
pupils  quiet  and  orderly,  and  allows  the  school  output 
to  be  quantified,  and  some  of  it  gives  time  for  more 
care  in  the  choice  of  words.  But  is  it  a  gain  to  sub- 
stitute a  letter  for  a  visit,  to  try  to  give  written 
precedence  over  spoken  forms?  Here  again  we  violate 
the  great  law  that  the  child  repeats  the  history  of  the 
race,  and  that,  from  the  larger  historic  standpoint, 
writing  as  a  mode  of  utterance  is  only  the  latest  fashion. 

Of  course  the  pupils  must  write,  and  write  well,  just  as  they  must 
read,  and  read  much;  but  that  Enghsh  suffers  from  insisting  upon 
this  double  long  circuit  too  early  and  cultivates  it  to  excess,  de- 
vitalizes school  language  and  makes  it  a  little  unreal,  like  other 
affectations  of  adult  ways,  so  that  on  escaping  from  its  thraldom  the 
child  and  youth  slump  back  to  the  language  of  the  street  as  never 
before.  This  is  a  false  application  of  the  principle  of  learning  to  do 
by  doing.  The  young  do  not  learn  to  write  by  writing,  but  by  read- 
ing and  hearing.  To  become  a  good  writer  one  must  read,  feel, 
think,  experience,  until  he  has  something  to  say  that  others  want  to 
hear.  The  golden  age  of  French  literature,  as  Gaston  Deschamps 
and  Brunetiere  have  lately  told  us,  was  that  of  the  salon,  when  con- 
versation dominated  letters,  set  fashions,  and  made  the  charm  of 
French  style.  Its  lowest  ebb  was  when  bookishness  led  and  people 
began  to  talk  as  they  wrote. 

IV.  The  fourth  cause  of  degeneration  of  school 
English  is  the  growing  preponderance  of  concrete  words 
for  designating  things  of  sense  and  physical  acts,  over 
the  higher  element  of  language  that  names  and  deals 
with  concepts,  ideas,  and  non-material  things.  The 
object-lesson  came  in  as  a  reaction  against  the  danger 
of  merely  verbal  and  definition  knowledge  and  word 
memory.  Now  it  has  gone  so  far  that  not  only  things 
but  even  languages,  vernacular  and  foreign,  are  taught 
by  appeals  to  the  eye.  More  lately,  elementary  science 
has  introduced   another   area   of   pictures    and   things 

248 


INTELLECTUAL   EDUCATION   AND  SCHOOL  WORK 

while  industrial  education  has  still  further  greatly  en- 
larged the  material  sensori-motor  element  of  training. 
Geography  is  taught  with  artifacts,  globes,  maps,  sand 
boxes,  drawing.  Miss  Margaret  Smith  ^  counted  two 
hundred  and  eighty  objects  that  must  be  distributed  and 
gathered  for  forty  pupils  in  a  single  art  lesson.  Instruc- 
tion, moreover,  is  more  and  more  busied  upon  parts  and 
details  rather  than  wholes,  upon  analysis  rather  than 
synthesis.  Thus  in  modern  pedagogy  there  is  an  in- 
creased tyranny  of  things,  a  growing  neglect  or  ex- 
clusion of  all  that  is  unseen. 

The  first  result  of  this  is  that  the  modern  school 
child  is  more  and  more  mentally  helpless  without  ob- 
jects of  sense.  Conversation  is  increasingly  concrete,  if 
not  of  material  things  and  persons  present  in  time  and 
even  place.  Instead  of  dealing  with  thoughts  and 
ideas,  speech  and  writing  is  close  to  sense  and  the  words 
used  are  names  for  images  and  acts.  But  there  is 
another  higher  part  of  language  that  is  not  so  abjectly 
tied  down  to  perception,  but  that  lives,  moves,  and  has 
its  being  in  the  field  of  concepts  rather  than  percepts, 
which,  to  use  Earle's  distinction,  is  symbolic  and  not 
presentative,  that  describes  thinking  that  is  not  mere 
contiguity  in  space  or  sequence  in  time  but  that  is 
best  in  the  far  higher  and  more  mental  associations  of 
likeness,  that  is  more  remote  from  activity,  that,  to  use 
logical  terminology,  is  connotative  and  not  merely  de- 
notative, that  has  extension  as  well  as  intension,  that 
requires  abstraction  and  generalization.  Without  this 
latter  element  higher  mental  development  is  lacking 
because  this  means  more  than  word-painting  the  ma- 
terial world. 

1  The  Psychological  and  Pedagogical  Aspect  of   Language.     Peda- 
gogical Seminary,  December,  1903,  vol.  10,  pp.  438-458. 

249 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

Our  school  youth  to-day  suffer  from  just  this  defect. 
If  their  psychic  operations'  can  be  called  thought  it  is 
of  that  elementary  and  half  animal  kind  that  consists 
in  imagery.  Their  talk  with  each  other  is  of  things 
of  present  and  immediate  interest.  They  lack  even  the 
elements  of  imagination,  which  makes  new  combinations 
and  is  creative,  because  they  are  dominated  by  mental 
pictures  of  the  sensory.  Large  views  that  take  them 
afield  away  from  the  persons  and  things  and  acts  they 
know  do  not  appeal  to  them.  Attempts  to  think  rigor- 
ously are  too  hard.  The  teacher  feels  that  all  the 
content  of  mind  must  come  in  through  the  senses,  and 
that  if  these  are  well  fed,  inferences  and  generalizations 
wall  come  of  themselves  later.  Many  pupils  have  never 
in  their  lives  talked  five  minutes  before  others  on  any 
subject  w^hatever  that  can  properly  be  called  intel- 
lectual. It  irks  them  to  occupy  themselves  with  purely 
mental  processes,  so  enslaved  are  they  by  what  is  near 
and  personal,  and  thus  they  are  impoverished  in  the 
best  elements  of  language.  It  is  as  if  what  are  some- 
times called  the  associative  fibers,  both  ends  of  which 
are  in  the  brain,  were  dwarfed  in  comparison  with  the 
afferent  and  efferent  fibers  that  mediate  sense  and  mo- 
tion. 

That  the  soul  of  language  as  an  instrument  of 
thought  consists  in  this  non-presentative  element,  so 
often  lacking,  is  conclusively  shown  in  the  facts  of 
speech  diseases.  In  the  slowly  progressive  aphasias, 
of  late  so  carefully  studied,  the  words  first  lost  are  those 
of  things  and  acts  most  familiar  to  the  patient,  while 
the  words  that  persist  longest  in  the  wreckage  of  the 
speech-centers  are  generally  words  that  do  not  designate 
the  things  of  sense.  A  tailor  loses  the  power  to  name 
his  chalk,  measure,  shears,  although  he  can  long  talk 

250 


INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION  AND  SCHOOL  WORK 

fluently  of  what  little  he  may  chance  to  know  of  God, 
beauty,  truth,  virtue,  happiness,  prosperity,  etc.  The 
farmer  is  unable  to  name  the  cattle  in  his  yard  or  his 
own  occupations,  although  he  can  reason  as  well  as  ever 
about  politics;  can  not  discuss  coin  or  bills,  but  can 
talk  of  financial  policies  and  securities,  or  about  health 
and  wealth  generally.  The  reason  is  obvious.  It  is 
because  concrete  thinking  has  two  forms,  the  word  and 
the  image,  and  the  latter  so  tends  to  take  the  place  of 
the  former  that  it  can  be  lost  to  both  sense  and  articu- 
lation without  great  impairment,  whereas  conceptual 
thinking  lacks  imagery  and  depends  upon  words  alone, 
and  hence  these  must  persist  because  they  have  no 
alternate  form  which  vicariates  for  them. 

In  its  lower  stages,  speech  is  necessarily  closely  bound 
up  with  the  concrete  world;  but  its  real  glory  appears 
in  its  later  stages  and  its  higher  forms,  because  there 
the  soul  takes  flight  in  the  intellectual  world,  learns  to 
live  amidst  its  more  spiritual  realities,  to  put  names 
to  thoughts,  which  is  far  higher  than  to  put  names  to 
things.  It  is  in  this  world  that  the  best  things  in  the 
best  books  live;  and  the  modern  school-bred  distaste  for 
them,  the  low-ranged  mental  action  that  hovers  near  the 
coastline  of  matter  and  can  not  launch  out  with  zest 
into  the  open  sea  of  thoughts,  holding  communion  with 
the  great  dead  of  the  past  or  the  great  living  of  the 
distant  present,  seems  almost  like  a  slow  progressive 
abandonment  of  the  high  attribute  of  speech  and  the 
lapse  toward  infantile  or  animal  picture-thinking.  If 
the  school  is  slowly  becoming  speechless  in  this  sense, 
if  it  is  lapsing  in  all  departments  toward  busy  work 
and  losing  silence,  repose,  the  power  of  logical  thought, 
and  even  that  of  meditation,  which  is  the  muse  of 
originality,  this  is  perhaps  the  gravest  of  all  these  types 

251 


YOUTH  :  ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

of  decay.  If  the  child  has  no  resources  in  solitude,  can 
not  think  without  the  visual  provocation,  is  losing  sub- 
jective life,  enthusiasm  for  public,  social,  ethical  ques- 
tions, is  crippled  for  intellectual  pursuits,  cares  only 
in  a  languid  way  for  literary  prose  and  poetry,  re- 
sponds only  to  sensuous  stimuli  and  events  at  short 
range,  and  is  indifferent  to  all  wide  relations  and  moral 
responsibility,  cares  only  for  commercial  self-interest, 
the  tactics  of  field  sport,  laboratory  occupations  and 
things  which  can  be  illustrated  from  a  pedagogic  mu- 
seum, then  the  school  is  dwarfing,  in  dawning  maturity, 
the  higher  powers  that  belong  to  this  stage  of  develop- 
ment and  is  responsible  for  mental  arrest. 

In  this  deplorable  condition,  if  we  turn  to  the  child 
study  of  speech  for  help,  we  find  that,  although  it  has 
been  chiefly  occupied  with  infant  vocabularies,  there  are 
already  a  very  few  and  confessedly  crude  and  feeble 
beginnings,  but  even  these  shed  more  light  on  the  lost 
pathway  than  all  other  sources  combined.  The  child 
once  set  in  their  midst  again  corrects  the  wise  men. 
We  will  first  briefly  recapitulate  these  and  then  state 
and  apply  their  lessons. 

Miss  Williams  ^  found  that  out  of  253  young  ladies  only  133  did 
not  have  favorite  sounds,  a  and  a  leading  among  the  vowels,  and  I, 
r,  and  m  among  the  consonants.  Eighty-five  had  favorite  words 
often  lugged  in,  329  being  good.  Two  hundred  and  twenty-one,  as 
children,  had  favorite  proper  names  in  geography,  and  also  for  boys, 
but  especially  for  girls.  The  order  of  a  few  of  the  latter  is  as  follows: 
Helen,  36;  Bessie,  25;  Violet  and  Lilly,  20;  Elsie  and  Beatrice,  18; 
Dorothy  and  Alice,  17;  Ethel,  15;  Myrtle,  14;  Mabel,  Marguerite, 
Pearl,  and  Rose,  13;  May,  12;  Margaret,  Daisy,  and  Grace,  11;  Ruth 
and  Florence,  9;  Gladys,  8;  Maud,  Nellie,  and  Gertrude,  7;  Blanche 
and  Mary,  6;  Eveline  and  Pansy,  5;  Belle,  Beulah,  Constance,  Eleanor, 

1  Children's  Interest  in  Words.  Pedagogical  Seminary,  September, 
1902,  vol.  9,  pp.  274-295. 

252 


INTELLECTUAL   EDUCATION   AND  SCHOOL  WORK 

Elizabeth,  Eva,  Laura,  Lulu,  Pauline,  Virginia,  and  Vi\'ian,  4  each, 
etc. 

Of  ten  words  found  interesting  to  adolescents,  murmur  was  the 
favorite,  most  enjoying  its  sound.  Lullaby,  supreme,  annannaman- 
nannaharoumlemay,  immemorial,  lillibulero,  burbled,  and  incarn- 
adine were  liked  by  most,  while  zigzag  and  shigsback  were  not  liked. 
This  writer  says  that  adolescence  is  marked  by  some  increased  love 
of  words  for  motor  activity  and  in  interest  in  words  as  things  in  them- 
selves, but  shows  a  still  greater  rise  of  interest  in  new  words  and 
pronunciations;  "above  all,  there  is  a  tremendous  rise  in  interest  in 
words  as  instruments  of  thought."  The  flood  of  new  experiences, 
feelings,  and  views  finds  the  old  vocabulary  inadequate,  hence  ''the 
dumb,  bound  feeling  of  which  most  adolescents  at  one  time  or  another 
complain,  and  also  I  suspect  from  this  study  in  the  case  of  girls,  we 
have  an  explanation  of  the  rise  of  interest  in  slang."  ''The  second 
idea  suggested  by  our  study  is  the  tremendous  importance  of  hear- 
ing in  the  affective  side  of  language." 

Conradi^  found  that  of  273  returns  concerning  children's  pleasure 
in  knowing  or  using  new  words,  ninety-two  per  cent  were  affirmative, 
eight  per  cent  negative,  and  fifty  per  cent  gave  words  especially 
"liked."  Some  were  partial  to  big  words,  some  for  those  with  z 
in  them.  Some  found  most  pleasure  in  saying  them  to  themselves 
and  some  in  using  them  with  others.  In  all  there  were  nearly  three 
hundred  such  words,  very  few  of  which  were  artificial.  As  to  words 
pretty  or  queer  in  form  or  sound,  his  list  was  nearly  as  large,  but 
the  greater  part  of  the  words  were  different.  Sixty  per  cent  of  all 
had  had  periods  of  spontaneously  trying  to  select  their  vocabulary 
by  making  lists,  studying  the  dictionary,  etc.  The  age  of  those  w^ho 
did  so  would  seem  to  average  not  far  from  early  puberty,  but  the 
data  are  too  meager  for  conclusion.  A  few  started  to  go  through 
the  dictionary,  some  wished  to  astonish  their  companions  or  used 
large  new  words  to  themselves  or  their  dolls.  Seventy  per  cent  had 
had  a  passion  for  affecting  foreign  words  when  English  would  do 
as  well.  Conradi  says  "  the  age  varies  from  twelve  to  eighteen,  most 
being  fourteen  to  sixteen."  Some  indulge  this  tendency  in  letters, 
and  would  hke  to  do  so  in  conversation,  but  fear  ridicule.  Fifty-six 
per  cent  reported  cases  of  superfine  elegance  or  affected  primness  or 
precision  in  the  use  of  words.  Some  had  spells  of  effort  in  this 
direction,  some  belabor  compositions  to  get  a  style  that  suits  them, 
some  memorize  fine  passages  to  this  end,  or  modulate  their  voices  to 

1  Children's  Interests  in  Words,  Slang,  Stories,  etc.  Pedagogical 
Seminary,  October,  1903,  vol.  10,  pp.  359-404. 

253 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

aid  them,  affect  elegance  with  a  chosen  mate  by  agreement,  sohloquize 
before  a  glass  with  poses.  According  to  his  curve  this  tendency 
culminates  at  fourteen. 

Adjectivism,  adverbism,  and  nounism,  or  marked  disposition  to 
multiply  one  or  more  of  the  above  classes  of  words,  and  in  the  above 
order,  also  occur  near  the  early  teens.  Adjectives  are  often  used  as 
adverbial  prefixes  to  other  adjectives,  and  here  favorite  words  are 
marked.  Nearly  half  of  Conradi's  reports  show  it,  but  the  list  of 
words  so  used  is  small. 

Miss  Williams  presents  an  interesting  curve  of  slang  confessed  as 
being  both  attractive  and  used  by  226  out  of  251.     From  this  it  ap- 


40 
30 
20 
10 

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s 

/ 
/ 

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i 

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V 

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/, 

/ 

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\ 

\ 

\ 

^ 

^ 

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N 

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^ 

\ 

Age  8   9   10  11   12   13   14   15  16   17  18  19   80   | 

Slang 

Reading  Ci-aze 
Precision 


pears  that  early  adolescence  is  the  curve  of  greatest  pleasure  in  its 
use,  fourteen  being  the  culminating  year.  There  is  very  little  until 
eleven,  when  the  curve  for  girls  rises  very  rapidly,  to  fall  nearly  as 
rapidly  from  fifteen  to  seventeen.  Ninety-three  out  of  10-4  who  used 
it  did  so  despite  criticism. 

Conradi,  who  collected  and  prints  a  long  list  of  current  slang  words 
and  phrases,  found  that  of  295  young  boys  and  girls  not  one  failed  to 
confess  their  use,  and  eighty-five  per  cent  of  all  gave  the  age  at  which 
they  thought  it  most  common.  On  this  basis  he  constructs  the  above 
curve,  comparing  with  this  the  curve  of  a  craze  for  reading  and  for 
precision  in  speech. 

The  reasons  given  are,  in  order  of  frequency,  that  slang  was  more 

254 


INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION  AND  SCHOOL  WORK 

emphatic,  more  exact,  more  concise,  convenient,  sounded  pretty,  re- 
lieved formality,  was  natural,  manly,  appropriate,  etc.  Only  a  very- 
few  thought  it  was  vulgar,  limited  the  vocabulary,  led  to  or  was  a 
substitute  for  swearing,  destroyed  exactness,  etc.  This  writer  at- 
tempts a  provisional  classification  of  slang  expressions  under  the  sug- 
gestive heads  of  rebukes  to  pride,  boasting  and  loquacity,  hypocrisy, 
quaint  and  emphatic  negatives,  exaggerations,  exclamations,  mild 
oaths,  attending  to  one's  own  business  and  not  meddling  or  interfer- 
ing, names  for  money,  absurdity,  neurotic  effects  of  surprise  or  shock, 
honesty  and  lying,  getting  confused,  fine  appearance  and  dress,  words 
for  intoxication  which  Partridge  has  collected,^  for  anger  collated  by 
Chamberlain,^  crudeness  or  innocent  naivete,  love  and  sentimentality, 
etc.  Slang  is  also  rich  in  describing  conflicts  of  all  kinds,  praising 
courage,  censuring  inquisitiveness,  and  as  a  school  of  moral  discipline, 
but  he  finds,  however,  a  very  large  number  unclassified;  and  while  he 
maintains  throughout  a  distinction  between  that  used  by  boys  and 
by  girls,  sex  differences  are  not  very  marked.  The  great  majority 
of  terms  are  mentioned  but  once,  and  a  few  under  nearly  all  of  the 
above  heads  have  great  numerical  precedence.  A  somewhat  striking 
fact  is  the  manifold  variations  of  a  pet  typical  form.     Twenty-three 

shock  expletives,  e.  g.,  are,  ''Wouldn't  that you?"  the  blank 

being  filled  by  jar,  choke,  cook,  rattle,  scorch,  get,  start,  etc.,  or 
instead  of  you  adjectives  are  devised.  Feeling  is  so  intense  and 
massive,  and  psychic  processes  are  so  rapid,  forcible,  and  undeveloped 
that  the  pithiness  of  some  of  these  expressions  makes  them  brilliant 
and  creative  works  of  genius,  and  after  securing  an  apprenticeship 
are  sure  of  adoption.  Their  very  lawlessness  helps  to  keep  speech 
from  rigidity  and  desiccation,  and  they  hit  off  nearly  every  essential 
phrase  of  adolescent  life  and  experience. 

Conventional  modes  of  speech  do  not  satisfy  the  adolescent,  so 
that  he  is  often  either  reticent  or  slangy.  Walt  Whitman^  says  that 
slang  is  "an  attempt  of  common  humanity  to  escape  from  bald  literal- 
ism and  to  express  itself  inimitably,  which  in  the  highest  walks  pro- 
duces poets  and  poems";  and  again,  "  Daring  as  it  is  to  say  so,  in  the 
growth  of  language  it  is  certain  that  the  retrospect  of  slang  from  the 
start  would  be  the  recalling  from  their  nebulous  condition  of  all  that 
is  poetical  in  the  stores  of  human  utterance."     Lowell*  says,  "There 


1  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  April,  1900,  vol.  11,  p.  345  et  seq. 

2  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  January,  1895,  vol.  6,  pp.  585- 
592.      See  also  vol.  10,  p.  517  et  seq. 

3  North  American  Review,  November,  1885,  vol.  141,  pp.  431-435. 
*  Introduction  to  the  Biglow  Papers,  series  ii. 

255 


YOUTH:    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

is  death  in  the  dictionary,  and  where  language  is  too  strictly  limited 
by  convention,  the  ground  for  expression  to  grow  in  is  limited  also, 
and  we  get  a  potted  literature,  Chinese  dwarfs  instead  of  healthy 
trees."  Lounsbury  asserts  that  ''slang  is  an  effort  on  the  part  of 
the  users  of  language  to  say  something  more  vividly,  strongly,  con- 
cisely than  the  language  existing  permits  it  to  be  said.  It  is  the 
source  from  which  the  decaying  energies  of  speech  are  constantly  re- 
freshed." Conradi  adds  in  substance  that  weak  or  vicious  slang  is  too 
feeble  to  survive,  and  what  is  vital  enough  to  live  fills  a  need.  The 
final  authority  is  the  people,  and  it  is  better  to  teach  youth  to  dis- 
criminate between  good  and  bad  slang  rather  than  to  forbid  it  en- 
tirely. Emerson  calls  it  language  in  the  making,  its  crude,  vital, 
raw  material.  It  is  often  an  effective  school  of  moral  description, 
a  palliative  for  profanity,  and  expresses  the  natural  craving  for 
superlatives.  Faults  are  hit  off  and  condemned  with  the  curtness 
and  sententiousness  of  proverbs  devised  by  youth  to  sanctify  itself 
and  correct  its  own  faults.  The  pedagogue  objects  that  it  violates 
good  form  and  established  usage,  but  why  should  the  habits  of 
hundreds  of  years  ago  control  when  they  can  not  satisfy  the  needs  of 
youth,  which  requires  a  lingua  franca  of  its  own,  often  called  ''slan- 
guage"? Most  high  school  and  college  youth  of  both  sexes  have  two 
distinct  styles,  that  of  the  classroom  which  is  as  unnatural  as  the 
etiquette  of  a  royal  drawing-room  reception  or  a  formal  call,  and  the 
other,  that  of  their  own  breezy,  free,  natural  life.  Often  these  two 
have  no  relation  to  or  effect  upon  each  other,  and  often  the  latter 
is  at  times  put  by  with  good  resolves  to  speak  as  purely  and  therefore 
as  self-consciously  as  they  know,  with  petty  fines  for  every  slang 
expression.  But  very  few,  and  these  generally  husky  boys,  boldly 
try  to  assert  their  own  rude  but  vigorous  vernacular  in  the  field  of 
school  requirements. 

These  simple  studies  in  this  vast  field  demonstrate 
little  or  nothing,  but  they  suggest  very  much.  Slang 
commonly  expresses  a  moral  judgment  and  falls  into 
ethical  categories.  It  usually  concerns  ideas,  sentiment, 
and  will,  has  a  psychic  content,  and  is  never,  like  the 
language  of  the  school,  a  mere  picture  of  objects  of 
sense  or  a  description  of  acts.  To  restate  it  in  correct 
English  would  be  a  course  in  ethics,  courtesy,  taste, 
logical   predication    and   opposition,    honesty,    self-pos- 

256 


INTELLECTUAL   EDUCATION   AND  SCHOOL  WORK 

session,  modesty,  and  just  the  ideal  and  non-presentative 
mental  content  that  youth  most  needs,  and  which  the  sen- 
suous presentation  methods  of  teaching  have  neglected. 
Those  who  see  in  speech  nothing  but  form  condemn 
it  because  it  is  vulgar.  Youth  has  been  left  to  meet 
these  high  needs  alone,  and  the  prevalence  of  these 
crude  forms  is  an  indictment  of  the  delinquency  of 
pedagogues  in  not  teaching  their  pupils  to  develop 
and  use  their  intellect  properly.  Their  pith  and  meati- 
ness  are  a  standing  illustration  of  the  need  of  con- 
densation for  intellectual  objects  that  later  growth 
analyzes.  These  expressions  also  illustrate  the  law  that 
the  higher  and  larger  the  spiritual  content,  the  grosser 
must  be  the  illustration  in  which  it  is  first  couched. 
Further-  studies  now  in  progress  will,  I  believe,  make 
this  still  clearer. 

Again,  we  see  in  the  above,  outcrops  of  the  strong 
pubescent  instinct  to  enlarge  the  vocabulary  in  two 
ways.  One  is  to  affect  foreign  equivalents.  This  at  first 
suggests  an  appetency  for  another  language  like  the  dog- 
Latin  gibberish  of  children.  It  is  one  of  the  motives 
that  prompts  many  to  study  Latin  or  French,  but  it 
has  little  depth,  for  it  turns  out,  on  closer  study,  to  be 
only  the  affectation  of  superiority  and  the  love  of  mys- 
tifying others.  The  other  is  a  very  different  impulse 
to  widen  the  vernacular.  To  pause  to  learn  several 
foreign  equivalents  of  things  of  sense  may  be  anti- 
educational  if  it  limits  the  expansion  of  thought  in 
our  own  tongue.  The  two  are,  in  fact,  often  inversely 
related  to  each  other.  In  giving  a  foreign  synonym  when 
the  mind  seeks  a  new  native  word,  the  pedagogue  does 
not  deal  fairly.  In  this  irradiation  into  the  mother 
tongue,  sometimes  experience  with  the  sentiment  or  feel- 
ing, act,  fact,  or  object  precedes,  and  then  a  name  for  it 

257 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

is  demanded,  or  conversely  the  sound,  size,  oddness  or 
jingle  of  the  word  is  first  attractive  and  the  meaning 
comes  later.  The  latter  needs  the  recognition  and 
utilization  which  the  former  already  has.  Lists  of  fa- 
vorite words  should  be  Avrought  out  for  spelling  and 
writing  and  their  meanings  illustrated,  for  these  have 
often  the  charm  of  novelty  as  on  the  frontier  of  knowl- 
edge and  enlarge  the  mental  horizon  like  new  discoveries. 
We  must  not  starve  this  voracious  new  appetite  "  for 
words  as  instruments  of  thought." 

Interest  in  story-telling  rises  till  twelve  or  thirteen, 
and  thereafter  falls  off  perhaps  rather  suddenly,  partly 
because  youth  is  now  more  interested  in  receiving  than  in 
giving.  As  in  the  drawing  curve  we  saw  a  characteristic 
age  when  the  child  loses  pleasure  in  creating  as  its  power 
of  appreciating  pictures  rapidly  arises,  so  now,  as  the 
reading  curve  rises,  auditory  receptivity  makes  way  for 
the  visual  method  shown  in  the  rise  of  the  reading  curve 
with  augmented  zest  for  book-method  of  acquisition. 
Darkness  or  twilight  enhances  the  story  interest  in  chil- 
dren, for  it  eliminates  the  distraction  of  sense  and  encour- 
ages the  imagination  to  unfold  its  pinions,  but  the  youth- 
ful fancy  is  less  bat-like  and  can  take  its  boldest  flights 
in  broad  daylight.  A  camp-fire,  or  an  open  hearth  with 
tales  of  animals,  ghosts,  heroism,  and  adventure  can  teach 
virtue,  and  vocabulary,  style,  and  substance  in  their 
native  unity. 

The  pubescent  reading  passion  is  partly  the  cause  and 
partly  an  effect  of  the  new  zest  in  and  docility  to  the 
adult  world  and  also  of  the  fact  that  the  receptive  are 
now  and  here  so  immeasurably  in  advance  of  the  creative 
powers.  Now  the  individual  transcends  his  own  ex- 
perience and  learns  to  profit  by  that  of  others.  There  is 
now  evolved  a  penumbral  region  in  the  soul  more  or  less 

258 


INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION   AND  SCHOOL  WORK 

beyond  the  reach  of  all  school  methods,  a  world  of 
glimpses  and  hints,  and  the  work  here  is  that  of  the  pros- 
pector and  not  of  the  careful  miner.  It  is  the  age  of  skip- 
ping and  sampling,  of  pressing  the  keys  lightly.  What 
is  acquired  is  not  examinable  but  only  suggestive.  Per- 
haps nothing  read  now  fails  to  leave  its  mark.  It  can 
not  be  orally  reproduced  at  call,  but  on  emergency  it  is 
at  hand  for  use.  As  Augustine  said  of  God,  so  the  child 
might  say  of  most  of  his  mental  content  in  these  psychic 
areas,  ' '  If  you  ask  me,  I  do  not  know ;  but  if  you  do  not 
ask  me,  I  know  very  well  " — a  case  analogous  to  the 
typical  girl  who  exclaimed  to  her  teacher,  "  I  can  do 
and  understand  this  perfectly  if  you  only  won't  ex- 
plain it."  That  is  why  examinations  in  English,  if  not 
impossible,  as  Goldwin  Smith  and  Oxford  hold,  are  very 
liable  to  be  harmful,  and  recitations  and  critical  notes  an 
impertinence,  and  always  in  danger  of  causing  arrest 
of  this  exquisite  romantic  function  in  which  literature 
comes  in  the  closest  relation  to  life,  keeping  the  heart 
warm,  reenforcing  all  its  good  motives,  preforming 
choices,  and  universalizing  its  sympathies. 

R.  W.  Bullock^  classified  and  tabulated  2,000  returns  from  school- 
children from  the'third  to  the  twelfth  grade,  both  inclusive,  concern- 
ing their  reading.  From  this  it  appeared  that  the  average  boy  of  the 
third  grade  "read  4.9  books  in  six  months;  that  the  average  falls  to 
3.6  in  the  fourth  and  fifth  grades  and  rises  to  a  maximum  of  6.5  in 
the  seventh  grade,  then  drops  quite  regularly  to  3  in  the  twelfth 
grade  at  the  end  of  the  high  school  course."  The  independent  tabu- 
lation of  returns  from  other  cities  showed  little  variation.  ''  Grade 
for  grade,  the  girls  read  more  than  the  boys,  and  as  a  rule  they  reach 
their  maximum  a  year  sooner,  and  from  a  general  maximum  of  5.9 
books  there  is  a  drop  to  3.3  at  the  end  of  the  course."  The  age  of 
maximum  reading  may  be  postponed  or  accelerated  perhaps  nearly 
a  year  by  the  absence  or  presence  of  library  facilities.     Tabulating  the 

1  Some  Observations  on  Children's  Reading.  Proceedings  of  the 
National  Educational  Association,  1897,  pp.  1015-1021. 

259 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

short  stories  read  per  week,  it  was  found  that  these  averaged  2.1  in 
the  third  grade,  rose  to  7.7  per  week  in  the  seventh  grade,  and  in  the 
twelfth  had  fallen  to  2.3,  showing  the  same  general  tendency. 

The  percentage  tables  for  boys'  preference  for  eight  classes  of 
stories  are  here  only  suggestive.  "War  stories  seem  popular  with 
third  grade  boys,  and  that  liking  seems  well  marked  through  the 
sixth,  seventh,  and  eighth  grades.  Stories  of  adventure  are  popular 
all  through  the  heroic  period,  reaching  their  maximum  in  the  eighth 
and  ninth  grades.  The  liking  for  biography  and  travel  or  explora- 
tion grows  gradually  to  a  climax  in  the  ninth  grade,  and  remains  well 
up  through  the  course.  The  tender  sentiment  has  little  charm  for  the 
average  grade  boy,  and  only  in  the  high  school  course  does  he  ac- 
knowledge any  considerable  use  of  love  stories.  In  the  sixth  grade 
he  is  fond  of  detective  stories,  but  they  lose  their  charm  for  him  as 
he  grows  older."  For  girls,  "stories  of  adventure  are  popular  in  the 
sixth  grade,  and  stories  of  travel  are  always  enjoyed.  The  girl  likes 
biography,  but  in  the  high  school,  true  to  her  sex,  she  prefers  stories 
of  great  women  rather  than  great  men,  but  because  she  can  not  get 
them  reads  those  of  men.  Pity  it  is  that  the  biographies  of  so  few 
of  the  world's  many  great  women  are  written.  The  taste  for  love 
stories  increases  steadily  to  the  end  of  the  high  school  course.  Beyond 
that  we  have  no  record."  Thus  "the  maximum  amr  unt  of  reading 
is  done  in  every  instance  between  the  sixth  and  eighth  grades,  the 
average  being  in  the  seventh  grade  at  an  average  age  of  fourteen  and 
one-tenth  years."  Seventy-five  per  cent  of  all  discuss  their  reading 
with  some  one,  and  the  writer  urges  that  "when  ninety-five  per  cent 
of  the  boys  prefer  adventure  or  seventy-five  per  cent  of  the  girls 
prefer  love  stories,  that  is  what  they  are  going  to  read,"  and  the  duty 
of  the  teacher  or  librarian  is  to  see  that  they  have  both  in  the  highest, 
purest  form. 

Henderson  ^  found  that  of  2,989  children  from  nine  to  fifteen, 
least  books  were  read  at  the  age  of  nine  and  most  at  the  age  of  fifteen, 
and  that  there  was  "a  gradual  rise  in  amount  throughout,  the  only 
break  being  in  the  case  of  girls  at  the  age  of  fourteen  and  the  boys  at 
the  age  of  twelve."  For  fiction  the  high- water  mark  was  reached 
for  both  sexes  at  eleven,  and  the  subsequent  fall  is  far  less  rapid  for 
girls  than  for  boys.  "At  the  age  of  thirteen  the  record  for  travel 
and  adventure  stands  highest  in  the  case  of  the  boys,  phenomenally 
so.  There  is  a  gradual  rise  in  history  with  age,  and  a  corresponding 
decline  in  fiction." 

1  Report  on  Child  Reading.  New  York  Report  of  State  Superin- 
tendent, 1897,  vol.  2,  p.  979. 

260 


INTELLECTUAL   EDUCATION  AND  SCHOOL  WORK 

Kirkpatrick^  classified  returns  from  5,000  children  from  the  fourth 
to  the  ninth  grade  in  answer  to  questions  that  concerned  their  read- 
ing. He  found  a  sudden  increase  in  the  sixth  grade,  when  children 
are  about  twelve,  when  there  is  often  a  veritable  reading  craze. 
Dolls  are  abandoned  and  "  plays,  games,  and  companionship  of  others 
are  less  attractive,  and  the  reading  hunger  in  many  children  becomes 
insatiable  and  is  often  quite  indiscriminate."  It  seems  to  "most 
frequently  begin  at  about  twelve  years  of  age  and  continue  at  least 
three  or  four  years,"  after  which  increased  home  duties,  social  re- 
sponsibilities, and  school  requirements  reduce  it  and  make  it  more 
discriminating  in  quality.  "The  fact  that  boys  read  about  twice  as 
much  history  and  travel  as  girls  and  only  about  two-thirds  as  much 
poetry  and  stories  shows  beyond  question  that  the  emotional  and 
intellectual  wants  of  boj's  and  girls  are  essentially  different  before 
sexual  maturity." 

Miss  Vostrovsky  ^  found  that  among  1,269  children  there  was  a 
great  increase  of  taste  for  reading  as  shown  by  the  number  of  books 
taken  from  the  library,  which  began  with  a  sharp  rise  at  eleven  and 
increased  steadily  to  nineteen,  when  her  survey  ended;  that  boys 
read  most  till  seventeen,  and  then  girls  took  tne  precedence.  The 
taste  for  juvenile  stories  was  declining  and  that  for  fiction  and  general 
literature  was  rapidly  increased.  At  about  the  sixteenth  year  a  change 
took  place  in  both  sexes,  "showing  then  the  beginning  of  a  greater 
interest  in  works  of  a  more  general  character."  Girls  read  more 
fiction  than  boys  at  every  age,  but  the  interest  in  it  begins  to  be  very 
decided  at  adolescence.  With  girls  it  appears  to  come  a  little  earlier 
and  with  greater  suddenness,  while  the  juvenile  story  maintains  a 
strong  hold  upon  boys  even  after  the  fifteenth  year.  The  curve  of 
decline  in  juvenile  stories  is  much  more  pronounced  in  both  sexes 
than  the  rise  of  fiction.  Through  the  teens  there  is  a  great  increase 
in  the  definiteness  of  answers  to  the  questions  why  books  were  chosen. 
Instead  of  being  read  because  they  were  "  good"  or  "  nice,"  they  were 
read  because  recommended,  and  later  because  of  some  special  interest. 
Girls  relied  on  recommendations  more  than  boys.  The  latter  were 
more  guided  by  reason  and  the  former  by  sentiment.  Nearly  three 
times  as  many  boys  in  the  early  teens  chose  books  because  they 
were  exciting  or  venturesome.  Even  the  stories  which  girls  called 
exciting  were  tame  compared  with  those  chosen  by  boys.     Girls  chose 

1  Children's  Reading.  North-Western  Monthly,  December,  1898, 
vol.  9,  pp.  188-191,  and  January,  1899,  vol.  9,  pp.  229-233. 

2  A  Study  of  Children's  Reading  Tastes.  Pedagogical  Seminary, 
December,  1899,  vol.  6,  pp.  523-535. 

261 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

books  more  than  four  times  as  often  because  of  children  in  them,  and 
more  often  because  they  were  funny.  Boys  care  very  httle  for  style, 
but  must  have  incidents  and  heroes.  The  author  says  "  the  special 
interest  that  girls  have  in  fiction  begins  about  the  age  of  adolescence. 
After  the  sixteenth  year  the  extreme  delight  in  stories  fades,"  or 
school  demands  become  more  imperative  and  uniform.  Girls  pre- 
fer domestic  stories  and  those  with  characters  like  themselves  and 
scenes  more  like  those  with  which  they  are  familiar.  "No  boy 
confesses  to  a  purely  girl's  story,  while  girls  frankly  do  to  an  inter- 
esting story  about  boys.  Women  writers  seem  to  appeal  more  to 
girls,  men  writers  to  boys.  Hence,  the  authors  named  by  each  sex 
are  almost  entirely  different.  In  fiction  more  standard  works  were 
drawn  by  boys  than  by  girls."  "When  left  to  develop  according  to 
chance,  the  tendency  is  often  toward  a  selection  of  books  which  unfit 
one  for  every-day  living,  either  by  presenting,  on  the  one  hand,  too 
many  scenes  of  delicious  excitement  or,  on  the  other,  by  narrowing 
the  vision  to  the  wider  possibilities  of  life." 

Out  of  523  full  answers,  Lancaster  found  that  453  "had  what 
might  be  called  a  craze  for  reading  at  some  time  in  the  adolescent 
period,"  and  thinks  parents  little  realize  the  intensity  of  the  desire  to 
read  or  how  this  nascent  period  is  the  golden  age  to  cultivate  taste 
and  inocidate  against  reading  what  is  bad.  The  curve  rises  rapidly 
from  eleven  to  fourteen,  culminates  at  fifteen,  after  which  it  falls 
rapidly.  Some  become  omnivorous  readers  of  everything  in  their 
way;  others  are  profoundly,  and  perhaps  for  life,  impressed  with  some 
single  book ;  others  have  now  crazes  for  history,  now  for  novels,  now 
for  dramas  or  for  poetry;  some  devour  encyclopedias;  some  imagine 
themselves  destined  to  be  great  novelists  and  compose  long  romances ; 
some  can  give  the  dates  with  accuracy  of  the  different  periods  of  the 
development  of  their  tastes  from  the  fairy  tales  of  early  childhood 
to  the  travels  and  adventures  of  boyhood  and  then  to  romance, 
poetry,  history,  etc.;  and  some  give  the  order  of  their  development 
of  taste  for  the  great  poets. 

The  careful  statistics  of  Dr.  Reyer  show  that  the  greatest  greed 
of  reading  is  from  the  age  of  fifteen  to  twenty-two,  and  is  on  the 
average  greatest  of  all  at  twenty.  He  finds  that  ten  per  cent  of  the 
young  people  of  this  age  do  forty  per  cent  of  all  the  reading.  Before 
twenty  the  curve  ascends  very  rapidly,  to  fall  afterward  yet  more 
rapidly  as  the  need  of  bread-winning  becomes  imperative.  After 
thirty-five  the  great  public  reads  but  little.  Eveiy  youth  should 
have  his  or  her  own  library,  which,  however  small,  should  be  select. 
To  seal  some  knowledge  of  their  content  with  the  delightful  sense  of 
ownership  helps  to  preserve  the  apparatus  of  culture,  keeps  green 

262 


INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION  AND  SCHOOL  WORK 

early  memories,  or  makes  one  of  the  best  of  tangible  mementoes  of 
parental  care  and  love.  For  the  young  especially,  the  only  ark  of 
safety  in  the  dark  and  rapidly  rising  flood  of  printer's  ink  is  to  turn 
resolutely  away  from  the  ideal  of  quantity  to  that  of  quality.  While 
literature  rescues  youth  from  individual  limitations  and  enables  it 
to  act  and  think  more  as  spectators  of  all  time,  and  sharers  of  all 
existence,  the  passion  for  reading  may  be  excessive,  and  books  which 
from  the  silent  alcoves  of  our  nearly  5,500  American  libraries  rule  the 
world  more  now  than  ever  before,  may  cause  the  young  to  neglect 
the  oracles  within,  weaken  them  by  too  wide  reading,  make  conver- 
sation bookish,  and  overwhelm  spontaneity  and  originality  with  a 
superfetation  of  alien  ideas. 

The  reading  passion  may  rage  with  great  intensity 
when  the  soul  takes  its  first  long  flight  in  the  world  of 
books,  and  ninety  per  cent  of  all  Conradi's  cases  showed 
it.  Of  these,  thirty-two  per  cent  read  to  have  the  feel- 
ings stirred  and  the  desire  of  knowledge  was  a  far  less 
frequent  motive.  Some  read  to  pass  idle  time,  others  to 
appear  learned  or  to  acquire  a  style  or  a  vocabulary. 
Romance  led.  Some  specialized,  and  with  some  the  ap- 
petite was  omnivorous.  Some  preferred  books  about  or 
addressed  to  children,  some  fairy  tales,  and  some  sought 
only  those  for  adults.  The  night  is  often  invaded  and 
some  become  ' '  perfectly  wild  ' '  over  exciting  adventures 
or  the  dangers  and  hardships  of  true  lovers,  laughing  and 
crying  as  the  story  turns  from  grave  to  gay,  and  a  few 
read  several  books  a  week.  Some  were  forbidden  and 
read  by  stealth  alone,  or  with  books  hidden  in  their  desks 
or  under  school  books.  Some  few  live  thus  for  years  in 
an  atmosphere  highly  charged  with  romance,  and  burn 
out  their  fires  wickedly  early  with  a  sudden  and  ex- 
treme expansiveness  that  makes  life  about  them  uninter- 
esting and  unreal,  and  that  reacts  to  commonplace  later. 
Conradi  prints  some  two  or  three  hundred  favorite  books 
and  authors  of  early  and  of  later  adolescence.  The 
natural  reading  of  early  youth  is  not  classic  nor  blighted 
18  263 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

by  compulsion  or  uniformity  for  all.  This  age  seeks  to 
express  originality  and  personality  in  individual  choices 
and  tastes. 

Suggestive  and  briefly  descriptive  lists  of  best  books 
and  authors  by  authorities  in  different  fields  on  which 
some  time  is  spent  in  making  selection,  talks  about  books, 
pooling  knowledge  of  them,  with  no  course  of  reading 
even  advised  and  much  less  prescribed,  is  the  best  guid- 
ance for  developing  the  habit  of  rapid  cursory  reading. 
Others  before  Professor  De  Long,  of  Colorado,  have  held 
that  the  power  of  reading  a  page  in  a  moment,  as  a 
mathematician  sums  up  a  column  of  figures,  and  as  the 
artist  Dore  was  able  to  read  a  book  by  turning  the  leaves, 
can  be  attained  by  training  and  practise.  School  pres- 
sure should  not  suppress  this  instinct  of  omnivorous  read- 
ing, which  at  this  age  sometimes  prompts  the  resolve  to 
read  encyclopedias,  and  even  libraries,  or  to  sample  every- 
thing to  be  found  in  books  at  home.  Along  with,  but 
never  suppressing,  it  there  should  be  some  stated  reading, 
but  this  should  lay  down  only  kinds  of  reading  like 
the  four  emphasized  in  the  last  chapter  or  offer  a  goodly 
number  of  large  alternative  groups  of  books  and  authors, 
like  the  five  of  the  Leland  Stanford  University,  and  per- 
mit wide  liberty  of  choice  to  both  teacher  and  pupil. 
Few  triumphs  of  the  uniformitarians,  who  sacrifice  in- 
dividual needs  to  mechanical  convenience  in  dealing  with 
youth  in  masses,  have  been  so  sad  as  marking  off  and 
standardizing  a  definite  quantum  of  requirements  here. 
Instead  of  irrigating  a  wide  field,  the  well-springs  of  liter- 
ary interest  are  forced  to  cut  a  deep  canyon  and  leave 
wide  desert  plains  of  ignorance  on  either  side.  Besides 
imitation,  which  reads  what  others  do,  is  the  desire  to 
read  something  no  one  else  does,  and  this  is  a  palladium 
of  individuality.    Bad  as  is  the  principle,  the  selections 

264 


INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION  AND  SCHOOL  WORK 

are  worse,  including  the  saccliarinity  ineffable  of  Tenny- 
son's Princess  (a  strange  expression  of  the  progressive 
feminization  of  the  high  school  and  yet  satirizing  the 
scholastic  aspiration  of  girls)  which  the  virile  boy  abhors, 
books  about  books  which  are  two  removes  from  life,  and 
ponderous  Latinity  authors  which  for  the  Saxon  boy  sug- 
gest David  fighting  in  Saul 's  armor,  and  which  warp  and 
pervert  -the  nascent  sentence-sense  on  a  foreign  model. 
Worst  of  all,  the  prime  moral  purpose  of  youthful  read- 
ing is  ignored  in  choices  based  on  form  and  style;  and 
a  growing  profusion  of  notes  that  distract  from  content 
to  language,  the  study  of  which  belongs  in  the  college  if 
not  in  the  university,  develops  the  tendencies  of  criticism 
before  the  higher  powers  of  sympathetic  appreciation 
have  done  their  work.^ 


1  Perhaps  the  best  and  most  notable  school  reader  is  Das  Deutsche 
Lesebuch,  begun  nearly  fifty  years  ago  by  Hopf  and  Paulsiek,  and  lately 
supplemented  by  a  corps  of  writers  headed  by  Dobeln,  all  in  ten  volumes 
of  over  3,500  pages  and  containing  nearly  six  times  as  much  matter  as 
the  largest  American  series.  Many  men  for  years  went  over  the  history 
of  German  literature,  from  the  Eddas  and  Nibelungenlied  down,  including 
a  few  living  writers,  carefully  selecting  saga,  legends,  Mdrchen,  fables, 
proverbs,  hymns,  a  few  prayers,  Bible  tales,  conundrums,  jests,  and 
humorous  tales,  with  many  digests,  epitomes  and  condensation  of  great 
standards,  quotations,  epic,  lyric,  dramatic  poetry,  adventure,  explora- 
tion, biography,  with  sketches  of  the  life  of  each  writer  quoted,  with  a 
large  final  volume  on  the  history  of  German  literature.  All  this,  \  is 
explained,  is  "statarie"  or  required  to  be  read  between  Octava^-  and 
Obersecunda.  It  is  no  aimless  anthology  or  chrestomathy  like  Chambers's 
Encyclopedia,  but  it  is  perhaps  the  best  product  of  prolonged  concerted 
study  to  select  from  a  vast  field  the  best  to  feed  each  nascent  stage  of 
later  childhood  and  early  youth,  and  to  secure  the  maximum  of  pleasure 
and  profit.  The  etliical  end  is  dominant  throughout  this  pedagogic 
canon. 

1  The  Prussian  gynanasium,  whose  course  is  classical  and  fits  for  the 
University,  has  nine  classes  in  three  divisions  of  three  classes  each.  The 
lower  classes  are  Octava,  Septa,  Sexta,  Quinta,  and  Quarta;  the  middle 
classes,  Untertertia,  Obertertia,  and  Untersecunda;  the  higher  classes, 
Obersecunda,  Unterprima,  and  Oberprima.  Pupils  must  be  at  least  nine 
years  of  age  and  have  done  tlxree  years  preparatory  work  before  entrance. 

265 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

(B)  Other  new  mental  powers  and  aptitudes  are  as 
yet  too  little  studied.  Very  slight  are  the  observations 
so  far  made  of  children's  historic,  which  is  so  clearly 
akin  to  literary,  interest  and  capacity.  With  regard  to 
this  and  several  other  subjects  in  the  curriculum  we  are 
in  the  state  of  Watts  when  he  gazed  at  the  tea-kettle  and 
began  to  dream  of  the  steam-engine ;  we  are  just  recog- 
nizing a  new  power  and  method  destined  to  reconstruct 
and  increase  the  efficiency  of  education,  but  only  after  a 
long  and  toilsome  period  of  limited  successes. 

Mrs.  Barnes  ^  told  a  story  without  date,  place,  name,  or  moral, 
and  compared  the  questions  which  1,250  children  would  like  to  have 
answered  about  it.  She  found  that  the  interest  of  girls  in  persons, 
or  the  number  who  asked  the  question  "who,"  culminated  at  twelve, 
when  it  coincided  with  that  of  boys,  but  that  the  latter  continued  to 
rise  to  fifteen.  The  interest  to  know  "place  where"  events  occurred 
culminated  at  eleven  with  girls,  and  at  fifteen,  and  at  a  far  higher 
point,  with  boys.  The  questions  "how"  and  "why,"  calling  for  the 
method  and  reason,  both  culminated  at  twelve  for  girls  and  fifteen 
for  boys,  but  were  more  infrequent  and  showed  less  age  differences 
than  the  preceding  question.  Interest  in  results  of  the  action  was 
most  pronounced  of  all,  culminating  at  twelve  in  girls  and  fifteen  in 
boys.  Details  and  time  excited  far  less  interest,  the  former  jointly 
culminating  for  both  sexes  at  eleven.  Interest  in  the  truth  of  the 
narrative  was  extremely  slight,  although  it  became  manifest  at 
fifteen,  and  was  growing  at  sixteen.  The  number  of  inferences  drawn 
stea  lily  increased  with  age,  although  the  increase  was  very  slight 
after  thirteen.  Both  legitimate  and  critical  inferences  increased  after 
eleven,  while  imaginative  inferences  at  that  age  had  nearly  reached 
their  maximum.  Interest  in  names  was  very  strong  throughout,  as 
in  primitive  people.  Boys  were  more  curious  concerning  "who," 
"where,"  and  "how";  girls  as  to  "why."  In  general,  the  historic 
curiosity  of  boys  was  greater  than  that  of  girls,  and  culminated  later. 
The  inferences  drawn  from  an  imagined  finding  of  a  log-house,  boat, 
and  arrows  on  a  lonely  island  indicate  that  the  power  of  inference, 
both  legitimate  and  imaginative,  develops  strongly  at  twelve  and 

1  The  Historic  Sense  among  Children.  In  her  Studies  in  Historical 
Method.     D.  C.  Heath  and  Co.,  Boston,  189G,  p.  57. 

266 


INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION   AND   SCHOOL   WORK 

thirteen,  after  which  doubt  and  the  critical  faculties  are  appaient; 
which  coincides  with  Mr.  M.  A.  Tucker's  conclusion,  that  doubt 
develops  at  thirteen  and  that  personal  inference  diminishes  about 
that  age. 

The  children  were  given  two  accounts  of  the  fall  of  Fort  Sumter, 
one  in  the  terms  of  a  school  history  and  the  other  a  despatch  of  equal 
length  from  Major  Anderson,  and  asked  which  was  best,  should  be 
kept,  and  why.  Choice  of  the  narrative  steadily  declined  after  eleven 
and  that  of  the  despatch  increased,  the  former  reaching  its  lowest, 
the  latter  its  highest,  point  at  fifteen,  indicating  a  preference  for  the 
first-hand  record.  The  number  of  those  whose  choice  was  affected 
by  style  showed  no  great  change  from  twelve  to  fifteen,  but  rose  very 
rapidly  for  the  next  two  years.  Those  who  chose  the  despatch  be- 
cause it  was  true,  signed,  etc.,  increased  rapidly  in  girls  and  boys 
throughout  the  teens,  and  the  preference  for  the  telegram  as  a  more 
direct  source  increased  very  rapidly  from  thirteen  to  seventeen. 

Other  studies  of  this  kind  led  Mrs.  Barnes  to  conclude  that 
children  remembered  items  by  groups ;  that  whole  groups  were  often 
omitted;  that  those  containing  most  action  were  best  remembered; 
that  what  is  remembered  is  remembered  with  great  accuracy;  that 
generalities  are  often  made  more  specific;  that  the  number  of  details 
a  child  carries  away  from  a  connected  narrative  is  not  much  above 
f  fty,  so  that  their  numbers  should  be  limited;  and  from  it  all  was 
inferred  the  necessity  of  accuracy,  of  massing  details  about  central 
characters  or  incidents,  letting  action  dominate,  omitting  all  that  is 
aside  from  the  main  line  of  the  story,  of  bringing  out  cause  and 
effect,  and  dramatizing  where  possible. 

Miss  Patterson  ^  collated  the  answers  of  2,237  children  to  the 
question  "What  does  1895  mean?"  The  blanks  ''Don't  know" 
decreased  very  rapidly  from  six  to  eight,  and  thereafter  maintained  a 
slight  but  constant  percentage.  Those  who  expanded  the  phrase  a 
little  without  intelligence  were  most  numerous  from  eight  to  ten, 
while  the  proportion  who  gave  a  correct  explanation  rose  quite 
steadily  for  both  sexes  and  culminated  at  fourteen  for  girls  and 
fifteen  for  boys.  The  latter  only  indicates  the  pupils  of  real  historic 
knowledge.  The  writer  concludes  that  ''the  sense  of  historical  time 
is  altogther  lacking  with  children  of  seven,  and  may  be  described  as 
sHght  up  to  the  age  of  twelve."  History,  it  is  thought,  should  be 
introduced  early  with  no  difference  between  boys  and  girls,  but  "up 
to  the  age  of  twelve  or  thirteen  it  should  be  presented  in  a  series  of 

1  Special  Study  on  Children's  Sense  of  Historical  Time.  Mrs.  Barnes's 
Studies  in  Historical  Method,  D.  C.  Heath  and  Co.,  Boston,  1896,  p.  94. 

267 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

striking  biographies  and  events,  appearing  if  possible  in  contemporary 
ballads  and  chronicles,  and  illustrated  by  maps,  chronologic  charts, 
and  as  richly  as  possible  by  pictures  of  contemporary  objects,  build- 
ings, and  people,"  At  the  age  of  fourteen  or  fifteen,  another  sort  of 
work  should  appear.  Original  sources  should  still  be  used,  but  they 
should  illustrate  not  ''the  picture  of  human  society  moving  before 
us  in  a  long  panorama,  but  should  give  us  the  opportunity  to  study 
the  organization,  thought,  feeling,  of  a  time  as  seen  in  its  concrete 
embodiments,  its  documents,  monuments,  men,  and  books."  The 
statesmen,  thinkers,  poets,  should  now  exceed  explorers  and  fighters; 
reflection  and  interpretation,  discrimination  of  the  true  from  the 
false,  comparison,  etc.,  are  now  first  in  order;  while  later  yet,  per- 
haps in  college,  should  come  severer  methods  and  special  mono- 
graphic study. 

Studies  of  mentality,  so  well  advanced  for  infants  and 
so  well  begun  for  lower  grades,  are  still  very  meager  for 
adolescent  stages  so  far  as  they  bear  on  growth  in  the 
power  to  deal  with  arithmetic,  drawing  and  pictures, 
puzzles,  superstitions,  collections,  attention,  reason,  etc. 
Enough  has  been  done  to  show  that  with  authority  to  col- 
lect data  on  plans  and  by  methods  that  can  now  be 
operated  and  with  aid  which  should  now  be  appropriated 
by  school  boards  and  teachers'  associations,  incalculable 
pedagogic  economy  could  be  secured  and  the  scientific 
and  professional  character  of  teaching  every  topic  in 
upper  grammar  and  high  school  and  even  in  the  early 
college  grades  be  greatly  enhanced.  To  enter  upon  this 
laborious  task  in  every  branch  of  study  is  perhaps  our 
chief  present  need  and  duty  to  our  youth  in  school, 
although  individual  studies  like  that  of  Binet^  belong 
elsewhere. 

(C)  The  studies  of  memory  up  the  grades  show  char- 
acteristic adolescent  changes,  and  some  of  these  results 
are  directly  usable  in  school. 

1  L'Etude  exp^rimentale  de  rintelligence.      Schleicher  Fr^res,  Paris, 
1903. 

268 


INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION  AND  SCHOOL  WORK 

Bolton^  tested  the  power  of  1,500  children  to  remember  and  write 
dictated  digits,  and  found,  of  course,  increasing  accuracy  with  the 
older  pupils.  He  also  found  that  the  memory  span  increased  with 
age  rather  than  with  the  growth  of  intelligence  as  determined  by 
grade.  The  pupils  depended  largely  upon  visualization,  and  this  and 
concentrated  attention  suggested  that  growth  of  memory  did  not 
necessarily  accompany  intellectual  advancement.  Girls  generally 
surpassed  boys,  and  as  with  clicks  too  rapid  to  be  counted,  it  was 
found  that  when  the  pupils  reached  the  limits  of  their  span,  the  num- 
ber of  digits  was  overestimated.  The  power  of  concentrated  and 
prolonged  attention  was  tested.  The  probability  of  error  for  the 
larger  number  of  digits,  7  and  8,  decreased  in  a  marked  way  with  the 
development  of  pubescence,  at  least  up  to  fourteen  years,  with  the 
suggestion  of  a  slight  rise  again  at  fifteen. 

In  comprehensive  tests  of  the  ability  of  Chicago  children  to  re- 
member figures  seen,  heard,  or  repeated  by  them,  it  was  found  that, 
from  seven  to  nine,  auditory  were  slightly  better  remembered  than 
visual  impressions.  From  that  age  the  latter  steadily  increased  over 
the  former.  After  thirteen,  auditory  memory  increased  but  little, 
and  was  already  about  ten  per  cent  behind  visual,  which  continued  to 
increase  at  least  till  seventeen.  Audio-visual  memory  was  better 
than  either  alone,  and  the  span  of  even  this  was  improved  when 
articulatory  memory  was  added.  When  the  tests  were  made  upon 
pupils  of  the  same  age  in  different  grades  it  was  found  in  Chicago  that 
memory  power,  whether  tested  by  sight,  hearing,  or  articulation, 
was  best  in  those  pupils  whose  school  standing  was  highest,  and 
least  where  standing  was  lowest. 

When  a  series  of  digits  was  immediately  repeated  orally  and  a 
record  made,  it  was  found  ^  that  while  from  the  age  of  eight  to  twelve 
the  memory  span  increased  only  eight  points,  from  fourteen  to 
eighteen  it  increased  thirteen  points.  The  number  of  correct  repro- 
ductions of  numbers  of  seven  places  increased  during  the  teens,  al- 
though this  class  of  children  remain  about  one  digit  behind  normal 
children  of  corresponding  age.  In  general,  though  not  without  ex- 
ceptions, it  was  found  that  intelligence  grew  with  memory  span, 
although  the  former  is  far  more  inferior  to  that  of  the  normal  child 
than  the  latter,  and  also  that  weakness  of  this  kind  of  memory  is  not 
an  especially  prominent  factor  of  weak-mindedness. 

1  The  Growth  of  Memory  in  School  Children.  American  Journal  of 
Psychology,  April,  1892,  vol.  4,  pp.  362-380. 

2  Contribution  to  the  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of  Feeble-minded 
Children.  By  G.  E.  Johnson.  Pedagogical  Seminary,  October,  1895, 
vol.  3,  p.  270. 

269 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

Shaw  '  tested  memory  in  700  school  children  by  dividing  a  story 
of  324  words  into  152  phrases,  having  it  read  and  immediately  repro- 
duced by  them,  and  selecting  alternate  grades  from  the  third  grammar 
to  the  end  of  the  high  school,  with  a  few  college  students.  The 
maximum  power  of  this  kind  of  memory  was  attained  by  boys  in  the 
high  school  period.  Girls  remembered  forty-three  per  cent  in  the 
seventh  grade,  and  in  the  high  school  forty-seven  per  cent.  The  in- 
crease by  two-year  periods  was  most  rapid  between  the  third  and 
fifth  grades.  Four  terms  were  remembered  on  the  average  by  at 
least  ninety  per  cent  of  the  pupils,  41  by  fifty  per  cent,  and  130  by 
ten  per  cent.  The  story  written  out  in  the  terms  remembered  by 
each  percentage  from  ten  to  ninety  affords  a  most  interesting  picture 
of  the  growth  of  memory,  and  even  its  errors  of  omission,  insertion, 
substitution  and  displacement.  "The  growth  of  memory  is  more 
rapid  in  the  case  of  girls  than  boys,  and  the  figures  suggest  a  co- 
incidence with  the  general  law,  that  the  rapid  development  incident 
to  puberty  occurs  earlier  in  girls  than  in  boys." 

In  a  careful  study  of  children's  memory,  Kemsies^  concludes  that 
the  quality  of  memory  improves  with  age  more  rapidly  than  the 
quantity. 

W.  G.  Monroe  tested  275  boys  and  293  girls,  well  distributed,  from 
seven  to  seventeen  years  of  age,  and  found  a  marked  rise  for  both 
visual  and  auditory  memory  at  fifteen  for  both  sexes.  For  both 
sexes,  also,  auditory  memory  was  best  at  sixteen  and  visual  at 
fifteen. 

When  accuracy  in  remembering  the  length  of  tone  was  used  as  a 
test,  it  was  found  there  was  loss  from  six  to  seven  and  gain  from 
seven  to  eight  for  both  sexes.  From  eight  to  nine  girls  lost  rapidly 
for  one  and  gained  rapidly  for  the  following  year,  while  boys  were 
nearly  stationary  till  ten,  after  which  both  sexes  gained  to  their  maxi- 
mum at  fourteen  years  of  age  and  declined  for  the  two  subsequent 
years,  both  gaining  power  from  sixteen  to  seventeen,  but  neither 
attaining  the  accuracy  they  had  at  fourteen.^ 

Netschajeff*  subjected  637  school  children,  well  distributed  be- 

1  A  Test  of  Memory  in  School  Children.  Pedagogical  Seminary, 
October,  1896,  vol.  4,  pp.  61-78. 

2  Zeitschrift  f iir  padagogische  Psychologic,  Pathologic  und  Hygiene. 
February,  1900.      Jahrgang  II,  Heft  1,  pp.  21-30. 

3  See  Scripture:  Scientific  Child  Study.  Transactions  of  the  Illinois 
Society  for  Child  Study,  May,  1895,  vol.  1,  No.  2,  pp.  32-37. 

*  Experimentelle  Untersuchungen  iiber  die  Gcdiichtnissentwickelung 
bei  Schulkindern.  Zeits.  f.  Psychologie,  u.  Physiologie  der  Sinnes-organe, 
November,  1900.     Bd.  24.     Heft  5,  pp.  321-351. 

,270 


INTELLECTUAL   EDUCATION   AND  SCHOOL   WORK 


11 

10 

i  » 
1  ^ 

3.      7 
t-     6 

1  = 

4 
3 

/ 

_M- 

_^ 

/ 

r'- 

/ 

— . 

-•" 

^' 



/ 

"v. 

r    * 

['■^ 

% 

z' 

^x-' 

■•'•;■ 

2f^ 

.Z' 

?^ 

b 

H 

.^ 

^ 

^L/-^^ 

/ 

,/ 

Age        9      10      11      13     13     U     15     IG      17      | 

GIRLS 


tween  the  ages  of  nine  and  eighteen,  to  the  following  tests.  Twelve 
very  distinct  objects  were  shown  them,  each  for  two  seconds,  which 
must  then  be  im- 
mediately written 
down.  Twelve  very 
distinct  noises  were 
made  out  of  sight; 
numbers  of  two  fig- 
ures each  were  read; 
three-syllable  words, 
which  were  names  of 
familiar  objects,  ob- 
jects that  suggested 
noises,  words  desig- 
nating touch,  tem- 
perature, and  muscle 
sensations,  words  de- 
scribing states  of  feel- 
ing, and  names  of 
abstract  ideas  also 
were  given  them.  The 
above  eight  series  of 
twelve  each  were 
all  reproduced  in 
writing,  and  showed 
that  each  kind  of 
memory  here  tested 
increased  with  age, 
with  some  slight 
tendency  to  decline 
at  or  just  before  pu- 
berty, then  to  rise 
and  to  slightly  de- 
cline after  the  six- 
teenth or  seventeenth 
year.  Memory  for 
objects  showed  the 
greatest  amount  of 
increase  during  the 
year  studied,  and 
words  for  feeling  next,  although  at  all  ages  the  latter  was  consid- 
erably below  the  former.  Boys  showed  stronger  memory  for  real 
impressions,  and  girls  excelled  for  numbers  and  words.     The  differ- 

271 


X— -  Objects 

Sounds 

Numbers 

Visualized  Words 


...Sound  Concepts 

.  +  Touch 

_  Feeling 

i«  Abstract  Ideas 


11 

10 

i  9 

t: 

i  6 

1      5 
4 
3 

Y 

.A-X- 

^^ 

'^'^ 

'^,^ 

y' 

y 

/ 

/ 

^ 

^ 

^— 

'~.y 

* 

<: 

^ 

K 

•n 

^ 

/'• 

**t 

^y 

>. 

-^ 

""^   > 

'^ 

^ 

.-• 

^o-o" 

/ 

Age         9       10      11      12     13     14*15     10      17      | 

COYS 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

ence  of  these  two  kinds  of  memory  was  less  with  girls  than  with  boys. 
The  greatest  difference  between  the  sexes  lay  between  eleven  and 
fourteen  years.  This  seems,  at  eighteen  or  nineteen,  to  be  slightly 
increased.  ''This  is  especially  great  at  the  age  of  puberty."  Children 
from  nine  to  eleven  have  but  slight  power  of  reproducing  emotions, 
but  this  increases  in  the  next  few  years  very  rapidly,  as  does  that 
of  the  abstract  words.  Girls  from  nine  to  eleven  deal  better  with 
words  than  with  objects;  boys  slightly  excel  with  objects.  Illusions 
in  reproducing  words  which  mistake  sense,  sound,  and  rhythm, 
which  is  not  infrequent  with  younger  children,  decline  with  age 
especially  at  puberty.  Up  to  this  period  girls  are  most  subject  to 
these  illusions,  and  afterward  boys.  The  preceding  tables,  in  which 
the  ordinates  represent  the  number  of  correct  reproductions  and  the 
abscissas  the  age,  are  interesting. 

Lobsien  made  tests  similar  to  those  of  Netschajeff ,  ^  with  modifi- 
cations for  greater  accuracy,  upon  238  boys  and  224  girls  from  nine 
to  fourteen  and  a  half  years  of  age.  The  preceding  tables  show  the 
development  of  the  various  kinds  of  memory  for  boys  and  girls: 

Boys. 


AGE. 

Objects. 

Noises. 

Number. 

Visual 
Concepts. 

Acoustic 
Concepts. 

Touch 
Concepts. 

Feeling 
Concepts. 

Soundi. 

13-14i.... 

12-13 

11-12 

10-11 

9-10 

92.56 

76.45 
89.78 
87.12 
64.00 

71.89 
57.33 
57.19 
55.33 
53.33 

80.67 
72.33 
70.22 
49.33 
49.09 

73.00 
69.67 
59.67 
55.11 
46.56 

74.78 
64.89 
63.00 
48.44 
43.78 

75.33 
73.67 
73.33 
57.11 
43.67 

75.44 
58.67 
55.33 
38.33 

27.22 

40.56 
37.67 
19.99 
12.44 
7.22 

Normal  I 
value.   1 

82.2 

59.02 

64.8 

60.6 

59.4 

64.2 

31.2 

24.0 

13-141.... 
12-13,.... 

11-12 

10-11 

9-10..... 

99.56 

92.89 
94.00 
75.78 
89.33 

82.67 
75.. 56 
56.00 
46.22 
46.22 

87.22 
74.89 
73.56 
62.44 
50.44 

3IRLS. 

96.67 

77.22 
72.78 
56.22 
54.22 

71.44 
63.11 
72.11 
54  78 
38.22 

82.00 
74.67 
70.89 
58.78 
51.11 

70.22 
67.33 
73.33 
43.22 
32.89 

41.33 
34.89 
23.22 
10.44 
6.89 

91.4 

62.2 

71.8 

71.0 

60.2 

67.2 

59.4 

23.8 

The  table  for  boys  shows  in  the  fourteenth  year  a  marked  increase 
of  memory  for  objects,  noises,  and  feelings,  especially  as  compared 
with  the  marked  relative  decline  the  preceding  year,  when  there  was 
a  decided  increase  in  visual  concepts  and  senseless  sounds.     The 


»  See  Note  4,  p.  270. 

272 


INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION   AND  SCHOOL  WORK 

twelfth  year  shows  the  greatest  increase  in  number  memory,  acoustic 
impressions,  touch,  and  feehng.  The  tenth  and  eleventh  years 
show  marked  increase  of  memory  for  objects  and  their  names.  Thus 
the  increase  in  the  strength  of  memory  is  by  no  means  the  same  year 
by  year,  but  progress  focuses  on  some  forms  and  others  are  neglected. 
Hence  each  type  of  memory  shows  an  almost  regular  increa.se  and 
decrease  in  relative  strength. 

The  table  for  girls  shows  a  marked  increase  of  all  memory  forms 
about  the  twelfth  year.  This  relative  increase  is  exceeded  only  in 
the  fourteenth  year  for  visual  concepts.  The  thirteenth  year  shows 
the  greatest  increase  for  sounds  and  a  remarkable  regression  for 
objects  in  passing  from  the  lowest  to  the  next  grade  above. 

In  the  accuracy  of  reproducing  the  order  of  impressions,  girls 
much  exceeded  boys  at  all  ages.  For  seen  objects,  their  accuracy 
was  twice  that  of  boys,  the  boys  excelling  in  order  only  in  num- 
ber. In  general,  ability  to  reproduce  a  series  of  impressions  increases 
and  decreases  with  the  power  to  reproduce  in  any  order,  but  by  no 
means  in  direct  proportion  to  it.  The  effect  of  the  last  member  in 
a  series  by  a  purely  mechanical  reproduction  is  best  in  boys.  The 
range  and  energy  of  reproduction  is  far  higher  than  ordered  sequence. 
In  general  girls  slightly  exceed  boys  in  recalling  numbers,  touch 
concepts,  and  sounds,  and  largely  exceed  in  recalling  feeling  concepts, 
real  things  and  visual  concepts. 

Colegrove^  tabulated  returns  from  the  early  memories  of  1,658 
correspondents  with  6,069  memories,  from  which  he  reached  the  con- 
clusions, represented  in  the  following  curves,  for  the  earliest  three 
memories  of  white  males  and  females. 

In  the  cuts  on  the  following  page,  the  heavy  line  represents  the 
first  memory,  the  broken  the  second,  and  the  dotted  the  third.  Age  at 
the  time  of  reporting  is  represented  in  distance  to  the  right,  and  the 
age  of  the  person  at  the  time  of  the  occurrence  remembered  is  repre- 
sented by  the  distance  upward.  "There  is  a  rise  in  all  the  curves  at 
adolescence.  This  shows  that,  from  the  age  of  twelve  to  fifteen,  boys 
do  not  recall  so  early  memories  as  they  do  both  before  and  after  this 
period."  This  Colegrove  ascribes  to  the  fact  that  the  present  seems 
so  large  and  rich.  At  any  rate,  "the  earliest  memories  of  boys  at 
the  age  of  fourteen  average  almost  four  years."  His  curves  for  girls 
show  that  the  age  of  all  the  first  three  memories  which  they  are  able 
to  recall  is  higher  at  fourteen  than  at  any  period  before  or  after;  that 

*  Memory:  An  Inductive  Study.  By  F.  W.  Colegrove.  Henry  Holt 
and  Co.,  New  York,  1900,  p.  229.  See  also  Individual  Memories.  Amer- 
ican Journal  of  Psychology,  January,  1899,  vol.  10,  pp.  228-255. 

273 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

at  seven  and  eight  the  average  age  of  the  first  things  recalled  is 
nearly  a  year  earlier  than  it  is  at  fourteen.  This  means  that  at 
puberty  there  is  a  marked  and  characteristic  obliteration  of  infantile 
memories  which  lapse  to  oblivion  with  augmented  absorption  in  the 
present. 

It  was  found  that  males  have  the  greatest  number  of  memories 
for  protracted  or  repeated  occurrences,  for  people,  and  clothing, 
topographical  and  logical  matters;  that  females  have  better  memories 
for  novel  occurrences  or  single  impressions.     Already  at  ten  and 


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eleven  motor  memories  begin  to  decrease  for  females  and  increase 
for  males.  At  fourteen  and  fifteen,  motor  memories  nearly  culminate 
for  males,  but  still  further  decline  for  females.  The  former  show  a 
marked  decrease  in  memory  for  relatives  and  playmates  and  an  in- 
crease for  other  persons.  Sickness  and  accidents  to  self  are  remem- 
bered less  by  males  and  better  by  females,  as  are  memories  of  fears. 
At  eighteen  and  nineteen  there  is  a  marked  and  continued  increase  in 
the  visual  memories  of  each  sex  and  the  auditory  memory  of  females. 
Memory  for  the  activity  of  others  increases  for  both,  but  far  more 
strongly  for  males.  Colegrove  concludes  from  his  data  that  "the 
period  of  adolescence  is  one  of  great  psychical  awakening.  A  wide 
range  of  memories  is  found  at  this  time.     From  the  fourteenth  year 

274 


INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION  AND  SCHOOL  WORK 

with  girls  and  the  fifteenth  with  boys  the  auditory  memories  are 
strongly  developed.  At  the  dawn  of  adolescence  the  motor  memory 
of  voice  nearly  culminates,  and  they  have  fewer  memories  of  sick- 
ness and  accidents  to  self.  During  this  time  the  memory  of  other 
persons  and  the  activity  of  others  is  emphasized  in  case  of  both 
boys  and  girls.  In  general,  at  this  period  the  special  sensory  mem- 
ories are  numerous,  and  it  is  the  golden  age  for  motor  memories. 
Now,  too,  the  memories  of  high  ideals,  self-sacrifice,  and  self-forget- 
fulness  are  cherished.  Wider  interests  than  self  and  immediate 
friends  become  the  objects  of  reflection  and  recollection." 

After  twenty  there  is  a  marked  change  in  the  memory  content. 
The  male  acquires  more  and  the  female  less  visual  and  auditory 
memories.  The  memories  of  the  female  are  more  logical,  and  topo- 
graphical features  increase.  Memories  of  sickness  and  accidents  to 
self  decrease  with  the  males  and  increase  with  the  females,  while  in 
the  case  of  both  there  is  relative  decline  in  the  memories  of  sickness 
and  accident  to  others.  From  all  this  it  would  appear  that  different 
memories  culminate  at  difTerent  periods,  and  bear  immediate  rela- 
tion to  the  whole  mental  life  of  the  period.  While  perhaps  some  of 
the  finer  analyses  of  Colegrove  may  invite  further  confirmation,  his 
main  results  given  above  are  not  only  suggestive,  but  rendered  very- 
plausible  by  his  evidence. 

Statistics  based  upon  replies  to  the  question  as  to  whether 
pleasant  or  unpleasant  experiences  were  best  remembered,  show  that 
the  former  increase  at  eleven,  rise  rapidly  at  fourteen,  and  culminate 
at  eighteen  for  males,  and  that  the  curve  of  painful  memories  follows 
the  same  course,  although  for  both  there  is  a  drop  at  fifteen.  For 
females,  the  pleasant  memories  increase  rapidly  from  eleven  to 
thirteen,  decline  a  little  at  fourteen,  rise  again  at  sixteen,  and 
culminate  at  seventeen,  and  the  painful  memories  follow  nearly  the 
same  course,  only  with  a  slight  drop  at  fifteen.  Thus,  up  to  twenty- 
two  for  males,  there  is  a  marked  preponderance  of  pleasant  over 
painful  memories,  although  the  two  rise  and  fall  together.  After 
thirty,  unpleasant  memories  are  but  little  recalled.  For  the  Indians 
and  negroes  in  this  census,  unpleasant  memories  play  a  far  more 
and  often  preponderating  role  suggesting  persecution  and  sad  ex- 
periences. Different  elements  of  the  total  content  of  memory  come 
to  prominence  at  different  ages.  He  also  found  that  the  best  re- 
membered years  of  life  are  sixteen  to  seventeen  for  males  and  fifteen 
for  females,  and  that  in  general  the  adolescent  period  has  more  to 
do  than  any  other  in  forming  and  furnishing  the  memory  plexus, 
while  the  seventh  and  eighth  years  are  most  poorly  remembered. 

It  is  also  known  that  many  false  memories  insert  themselves  into 
275 


YOUTH :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

the  texture  of  remembered  experiences.  One  dreams  a  friend  is 
dead  and  thinks  she  is  till  she  is  met  one  day  in  the  street ;  or  dreams 
of  a  fire  and  inquires  about  it  in  the  morning;  dreams  of  a  present 
and  searches  the  house  for  it  next  day;  delays  breakfast  for  a  friend, 
who  arrived  the  night  before  in  a  dream,  to  come  down  to  breakfast; 
a  child  hunts  for  a  bushel  of  pennies  dreamed  of,  etc.  These  phan- 
toms falsify  our  memory  most  often,  according  to  Dr.  Colegrove, 
between  sixteen  and  nineteen. 

Mnemonic  devices  prompt  children  to  change  rings  to  keep  ap- 
pointments, tie  knots  in  the  handkerchief,  put  shoes  on  the  dressing- 
table,  hide  garments,  associate  faces  with  hoods,  names  with  acts, 
things,  or  qualities  they  suggest;  visualize,  connect  figures,  letters 
with  colors,  etc.  From  a  scrutiny  of  the  original  material,  which  I 
was  kindly  allowed  to  make,  this  appears  to  rise  rapidly  at  puberty. 


276 


CHAPTER   XI 

THE   EDUCATION   OF   GIRLS 

Equal  opportunities  of  higher  education  now  open — Brings  new  dangers 
to  women — Ineradicable  sex  differences  begin  at  puberty,  when  the 
sexes  should  and  do  diverge — Different  interests — Sex  tension — Girls 
more  mature  than  boys  at  the  same  age — Radical  psj^chic  and  physio- 
logical differences  between  the  sexes — The  bachelor  women — Need- 
ed reconstruction  —  Food  —  Sleep — Regimen — Manners — Religion — 
Regularity — The  topics  for  a  girls'  curriculum — The  eternal  womanly. 

The  long  battle  of  woman  and  her  friends  for  equal 
educational  and  other  opportunities  is  essentially  won 
all  along  the  line.  Her  academic  achievements  have 
forced  conservative  minds  to  admit  that  her  intellect 
is  not  inferior  to  that  of  man.  The  old  cloistral  se- 
clusion and  exclusion  is  forever  gone  and  new  ideals 
are  arising.  It  has  been  a  noble  movement  and  is  a 
necessary  first  stage  of  woman's  emancipation.  The 
caricatured  maidens  "  as  beautiful  as  an  angel  but  as 
silly  as  a  goose,"  who  come  from  the  kitchen  to  the 
husband's  study  to  ask  how  much  is  two  times  two, 
and  are  told  it  is  four  for  a  man  and  three  for  a 
woman,  and  go  back  with  a  happy  ^'  Thank  you,  my 
dear  ' ' ;  those  who  love  to  be  called  baby,  and  appeal 
to  instincts  half  parental  in  their  lovers  and  husbands; 
those  who  find  all  the  sphere  they  desire  in  a  doll 's  house, 
like  Nora's,  and  are  content  to  be  men's  pets;  whose 
ideal  is  the  clinging  vine,  and  who  take  no  interest  in 
the  field  where  their  husbands  struggle,  will  perhaps 

277 


irOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIE.^E 

soon  survive  only  as  a  diminishing  remainder.  Mar- 
riages do  still  occur  where  woman's  ignorance  and 
helplessness  seem  to  be  the  chief  charm  to  men,  and 
may  be  happy,  but  such  cases  are  no  farther  from  the 
present  ideal  and  tendency  on  the  one  hand  than  on  '  lie 
other  are  those  which  consist  in  intellectual  partnerships, 
in  which  there  is  no  segregation  of  interests  but  which 
are  devoted  throughout  to  joint  work  or  enjoyment. 

A  typical  contemporary  writer  ^  thinks  the  question 
whether  a  girl  shall  receive  a  college  education  is  very 
like  the  same  question  for  boys.  Even  if  the  four  V% 
Kirche,  Kinder,  Kuchen,  and  Kleider  (which  may  be 
translated  by  the  four  C's,  Church,  Children,  Cooking, 
and  Clothes),  are  her  vocation,  college  may  help  her. 
The  best  training  for  a  young  woman  is  not  the  old  college 
course  that  has  proven  unfit  for  young  men.  Most  college 
men  look  forward  to  a  professional  training  as  few  women 
do.  The  latter  have  often  greater  sympathy,  readiness  of 
memory,  patience  with  technic,  skill  in  literature  and 
language,  but  lack  originality,  are  not  attracted  by  n- 
solved  problems,  are  less  motor-minded;  but  their 
training  is  just  as  serious  and  important  as  that  of  men. 
The  best  results  are  where  the  sexes  are  brought  closer 
together,  because  their  separation  generally  emphasizes 
for  girls  the  technical  training  for  the  profession  of 
womanhood.  With  girls,  literature  and  language  tak<^ 
precedence  over  science;  expression  stands  higher  than 
action;  the  scholarship  may  be  superior,  but  is  not  ef 
fective;  the  educated  woman  "  is  likely  to  mastei- 
technic  rather  than  art;  method,  rather  than  substance. 


1  David  Starr  Jordan:  The  Higher  Education  of  Women.     Popula" 
Science  Monthly,  December,   1902,  vol.  62,  pp.  97-107.     See  also  m 
article  on    this    subject  in  Munsey's    Magazine,   February,   1906,  aH' i 
President  Jordan's  reply  in  the  March  number,  1906. 

278 


^  THE   EDUCATION   OF   GIRLS 

She  may  know  a  good  deal,  but  she  can  do  nothing."  In 
most  separate  colleges  for  women,  old  traditions  are 
ore  prevalent  than  in  colleges  for  men.  In  the  annex 
.  stem,  she  does  not  get  the  best  of  the  institution.  By 
.  •  (coeducation  method,  "  young  men  are  more  earnest, 
b  Iter  in  manners  and  morals,  and  in  all  ways  more 
civilized  than  under  monastic  conditions.  The  women 
d')  more  work  in  a  more  natural  way,  with  better  per- 
srective  and  with  saner  incentives  than  when  isolated 
fro?!]  the  influence  of  the  society  of  men.  There  is 
leF;s  silliness  and  folly  where  a  man  is  not  a  novelty. 
In  coeducational  institutions  of  high  standards,  frivo- 
lo'JS  (conduct  or  scandals  of  any  form  are  rarely  known. 
The  responsibility  for  decorum  is  thrown  from  the 
school  to  the  woman,  and  the  woman  rises  to  the  re- 
Si>one.ibility."  The  character  of  college  work  has  not 
beei;  lowered  but  raised  by  coeducation,  despite  the  fact 
thac  Most  of  the  new,  small,  weak  colleges  are  coedu- 
cational. Social  strain,  Jordan  thinks,  is  easily  regu- 
lated, and  the  dormitory  system  is  on  the  whole  best, 
b'icause  the  college  atmosphere  is  highly  prized.  The 
reasons  for  the  present  reaction  against  coeducation  are 
av.ribed  partly  to  the  dislike  of  the  idle  boy  to  have 
gills  excel  him  and  see  his  failures,  or  because  rowdyish 
tendencies  are  checked  by  the  presence  of  women.  Some 
think  that  girls  do  not  help  athletics;  that  men  count 
^or  most  because  they  are  more  apt  to  be  heard  from 
l?;ter ;  but  the  most  serious  new  argument  is  the  fear  that 
\7oman's  standards  and  amateurishness  will  take  the 
place  of  specialization.  Women  take  up  higher  educa- 
tion because  they  like  it;  men  because  their  careers 
depend  upon  it.  Hence  their  studies  are  more  objec- 
tive and  face  the  world  as  it  is.  In  college  the  women 
do  as  well  as  men,  but  not  in  the  university.  The  half- 
19  279 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

educated  woman  as  a  social  factor  has  produced  many- 
soft  lecture  courses  and  cheap  books.  This  is  an  argu- 
ment for  the  higher  education  of  the  sex.  Finally, 
Jordan  insists  that  coeducation  leads  to  marriage,  and 
he  believes  that  its  best  basis  is  common  interest  and 
intellectual  friendship. 

From  the  available  data  it  seems,  however,  that  the 
more  scholastic  the  education  of  women,  the  fewer  chil- 
dren and  the  harder,  more  dangerous,  and  more  dreaded 
is  parturition,  and  the  less  the  ability  to  nurse  children. 
Not  intelligence,  but  education  by  present  man-made 
ways,  is  inversely  as  fecundity.  The  sooner  and  the 
more  clearly  this  is  recognized  as  a  universal  rule,  not, 
of  course,  without  many  notable  and  much  vaunted  ex- 
ceptions, the  better  for  our  civilization.  For  one,  I 
plead  with  no  wiiit  less  earnestness  and  conviction  than 
any  of  the  feminists,  and  indeed  with  more  fervor  be- 
cause on  nearly  all  their  grounds  and  also  on  others,  for 
the  higher  education  of  women,  and  would  welcome 
them  to  every  opportunity  available  to  men  if  they  can 
not  do  better;  but  I  would  open  to  their  election  an- 
other education,  which  every  competent  judge  would 
pronounce  more  favorable  to  motherhood,  under  the 
influence  of  female  principals  who  do  not  publicly  say 
that  it  is  ''  not  desirable  "  that  women  students  should 
study  motherhood,  because  they  do  not  know  whether 
they  will  marry;  who  encourage  them  to  elect  "  no 
special  subjects  because  they  are  women,"  and  who 
think  infant  psychology  "  foolish." 

Various  interesting  experiments  in  coeducation  are 
now  being  made  in  England.^     Some  are  whole-hearted 

1  Coeducation,  A  series  of  essays  by  various  authors,  edited  by  Alice 
Woods,  with  an  introduction  by  M.  E.  Sadler.  Longmans,  Green  and 
Co.,  London,  1903,  p.  148  et  scq. 

280 


THE   EDUCATION   OF  GIRLS 

and  encourage  the  girls  to  do  almost  everything  that 
the  boys  do  in  both  study  and  play.  There  are  girl 
prefects;  cricket  teams  are  formed  sometimes  of  both 
sexes,  but  often  the  sexes  matched  against  each  other; 
one  play-yard,  a  dual  staff  of  teachers,  ^nd  friendships 
between  the  boj^s  and  girls  are  not  tabooed,  etc.  In 
other  schools  the  sexes  meet  perhaps  in  recitation  only, 
have  separate  rooms  for  study,  entrances,  play-grounds, 
and  their  relations  are  otherwise  restricted.  The  opin- 
ion of  English  writers  generally  favors  coeducation  up 
to  about  the  beginning  of  the  teens,  and  from  there  on 
views  are  more  divided.  It  is  admitted  that,  if  there 
is  a  very  great  preponderance  of  either  sex  over  the 
other,  the  latter  is  likely  to  lose  its  characteristic 
qualities,  and  something  of  this  occurs  where  the  average 
age  of  one  sex  is  distinctly  greater  than  that  of  the 
other.  On  the  other  hand,  several  urge  that,  where  age 
and  numbers  are  equal,  each  sex  is  more  inclined  to 
develop  the  best  qualities  peculiar  to  itself  in  the 
presence  of  the  other. 

Some  girls  are  no  doubt  far  fitter  for  boys'  studies 
and  men's  careers  than  others.  Coeducation,  too,  gen- 
erally means  far  more  assimilation  of  girls'  to  boys' 
ways  and  work  than  conversely.  IMany  people  believe 
that  girls  either  gain  or  are  more  affected  by  coeduca- 
tion, especially  in  the  upper  grades,  than  boys.  It  is 
interesting,  however,  to  observe  the  differences  that  still 
persist.  Certain  games,  like  football  and  boxing,  girls 
can  not  play;  they  do  not  fight;  they  are  not  flogged 
or  caned  as  English  boys  are  when  their  bad  marks  foot 
up  beyond  a  certain  aggregate;  girls  are  more  prone 
to  cliques;  their  punishments  must  be  in  appeals  to 
school  sentiment,  to  which  they  are  exceedingly  sensi- 
tive; it  is  hard  for  them  to  bear  defeat  in  games  with 

281 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

the  same  dignity  and  unruffled  temper  as  boys;  it  is 
harder  for  them  to  accept  the  school  standards  of  honor 
that  condemn  the  tell-tale  as  a  sneak,  although  they  soon 
learn  this.  They  may  be  a  little  in  danger  of  being 
roughened  by  boyish  ways  and  especially  by  the  crude 
and  unique  language,  almost  a  dialect  in  itself,  preva- 
lent among  schoolboys.  Girls  are  far  more  prone  to 
overdo;  boys  are  persistingly  lazy  and  idle.  Girls  are 
content  to  sit  and  have  the  subject-matter  pumped  into 
them  by  recitations,  etc.,  and  to  merely  accept,  while 
boys  are  more  inspired  by  being  told  to  do  things  and 
make  tests  and  experiments.  In  this,  girls  are  often 
quite  at  sea.  One  writer  speaks  of  a  certain  feminine 
obliquity,  but  hastens  to  say  that  girls  in  these  schools 
soon  accept  its  code  of  honor.  It  is  urged,  too,  that 
in  singing  classes  the  voices  of  each  sex  are  better  in 
quality  for  the  presence  of  the  other.  In  many  topics 
of  all  kinds  boys  and  girls  are  interested  in  different 
aspects  of  the  same  theme,  and  therefore  the  work  is 
broadened.  In  manual  training,  girls  excel  in  all  ar- 
tistic work;  boys,  in  carpentry.  Girls  can  be  made 
not  only  less  noxiously  sentimental  and  impulsive,  but 
their  conduct  tends  to  become  more  thoughtful;  they 
can  be  made  to  feel  responsibility  for  bestowing  their 
praise  aright  and  thus  influencing  the  tone  of  the  school. 
Calamitous  as  it  would  be  for  the  education  of  boys 
beyond  a  certain  age  to  be  entrusted  entirely  or  chiefly 
to  women,  it  would  be  less  so  for  that  of  girls  to  be 
given  entirely  to  men.  Perhaps  the  great  women 
teachers,  whose  life  and  work  have  made  them  a  power 
with  girls  comparable  to  that  of  Arnold  and  Thring 
with  boys,  are  dying  out.  Very  likely  economic  mo- 
tives are  too  dominant  for  this  problem  to  be  settled  on 
its  merits  only.     Finally,  several  writers  mention  the 

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THE  EDUCATION  OF  GIRLS 

increased  healthfulness  of  moral  tone.  The  vices  that 
infest  boys'  schools,  which  Arnold  thought  a  quantity 
constantly  changing  with  every  class,  are  diminished. 
Healthful  thoughts  of  sex,  less  subterranean  and  base 
imaginings  on  the  one  hand,  and  less  gushy  senti- 
mentality on  the  other,  are  favored.  For  either  sex 
to  be  a  copy  of  the  other  is  to  be  weakened,  and  each 
comes  normally  to  respect  more  and  to  prefer  its 
own  sex. 

Not  to  pursue  this  subject  further  here,  it  is  probable 
that  many  of  the  causes  for  the  facts  set  forth  are  very 
different  and  some  of  them  almost  diametrically  op- 
posite in  the  two  sexes.  Hard  as  it  is  per  se,  it  is  after 
all  a  comparatively  easy  matter  to  educate  boys.  They 
are  less  peculiarly  responsive  in  mental  tone  to  the 
physical  and  psychic  environment,  tend  more  strongly 
and  early  to  special  interests,  and  react  more  vigor- 
ously against  the  obnoxious  elements  of  their  surround- 
ings. This  is  truest  of  the  higher  education,  and  more 
so  in  proportion  as  the  tendencies  of  the  age  are  toward 
special  and  vocational  training.  Woman,  as  we  saw, 
in  every  fiber  of  her  soul  and  body  is  a  more  generic 
creature  than  man,  nearer  to  the  race,  and  demands 
more  and  more  with  advancing  age  an  education  that 
is  essentially  liberal  and  humanistic.  This  is  progress- 
ively hard  when  the  sexes  differentiate  in  the  higher 
grades.  Moreover,  nature  decrees  that  with  advancing 
civilization  the  sexes  shall  not  approximate,  but  differ- 
entiate, and  we  shall  probably  be  obliged  to  carry  sex 
distinctions,  at  least  of  method,  into  many  if  not  most 
of  the  topics  of  the  higher  education.  Now  that  woman 
has  by  general  consent  attained  the  right  to  the  best 
that  man  has,  she  must  seek  a  training  that  fits  her 
own  nature  as  well  or  better.     So  long  as  she  strives 

283 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

to  be  manlike  she  will  be  inferior  and  a  pinchbeck  imi- 
tation, but  she  must  develop  a  new  sphere  that  shall 
be  like  the  rich  field  of  the  cloth  of  gold  for  the  best 
instincts  of  her  nature. 

Divergence  is  most  marked  and  sudden  in  the  pu- 
bescent period — in  the  early  teens.  At  this  age,  by 
almost  world-wide  consent,  boys  and  girls  separate  for 
a  time,  and  lead  their  lives  during  this  most  critical 
period  more  or  less  apart,  at  least  for  a  few  years,  until 
the  ferment  of  mind  and  body  which  results  in  maturity 
of  functions  then  born  and  culminating  in  nubility, 
has  done  its  work.  The  family  and  the  home  abundantly 
recognize  this  tendency.  At  twelve  or  fourteen,  brothers 
and  sisters  develop  a  life  more  independent  of  each 
other  than  before.  Their  home  occupations  differ  as  do 
their  plays,  games,  tastes.  History,  anthropology,  and 
sociology,  as  well  as  home  life,  abundantly  illustrate 
this.  This  is  normal  and  biological.  What  our  schools 
and  other  institutions  should  do,  is  not  to  obliterate 
these  differences  but  to  make  boys  more  manly  and  girls 
more  womanly.  We  should  respect  the  law  of  sexual 
differences,  and  not  forget  that  motherhood  is  a  very 
different  thing  from  fatherhood.  Neither  sex  should 
copy  nor  set  patterns  to  the  other,  but  all  parts  should 
be  played  harmoniously  and  clearly  in  the  great  sex 
symphony. 

I  have  here  less  to  say  against  coeducation  in  college, 
still  less  in  university  grades  after  the  maturity  which 
comes  at  eighteen  or  twenty  has  been  achieved;  but  it 
is  high  time  to  ask  ourselves  whether  the  theory  and 
practise  of  identical  coeducation,  especially  in  the  high 
school,  which  has  lately  been  carried  to  a  greater  ex- 
treme in  this  country  than  the  rest  of  the  world  recog- 
nizes,   has    not    brought    certain    grave    dangers,    and 

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THE  EDUCATION   OF   GIRLS 

whether  it  does  not  interfere  with  the  natural  differ- 
entiations seen  everywhere  else.  I  recognize,  of  course, 
the  great  argument  of  economy.  Indeed,  we  should  save 
money  and  effort  could  we  unite  churches  of  not  too 
diverse  creeds.  We  could  thus  give  better  preaching, 
music,  improve  the  edifice,  etc.  I  am  by  no  means  ready 
to  advocate  the  radical  abolition  of  coeducation,  but 
we  can  already  sum  up  in  a  rough,  brief  way  our  ac- 
count of  profit  and  loss  with  it.  On  the  one  hand,  no 
doubt  each  sex  develops  some  of  its  own  best  qualities 
best  in  the  presence  of  the  other,  but  the  question  still 
remains,  how  much,  when,  and  in  what  way,  identical 
coeducation  secures  this  end? 

As  has  been  said,  girls  and  boys  are  often  interested  in 
different  aspects  of  the  same  topic,  and  this  may  have  a 
tendency  to  broaden  the  view-point  of  both  and  bring  it 
into  sympathy  with  that  of  the  other,  but  the  question 
still  remains  whether  one  be  not  too  much  attracted  to  the 
sphere  of  the  other,  especially  girls  to  that  of  boys.  No 
doubt  some  girls  become  a  little  less  gushy,  their  con- 
duct more  thoughtful,  and  their  sense  of  responsibility 
greater;  for  one  of  woman's  great  functions,  which  is 
that  of  bestowing  praise  aright,  is  increased.  There  is 
also  much  evidence  that  certain  boys'  vices  are  miti- 
gated; they  are  made  more  urbane  and  their  thoughts 
of  sex  made  more  healthful.  In  some  respects  boys  are 
stimulated  to  good  scholarship  by  girls,  who  in  many 
schools  and  topics  excel  them.  We  should  ask,  however. 
What  is  nature's  way  at  this  stage  of  life?  Whether 
boys,  in  order  to  be  well  virified  later,  ought  not  to 
be  so  boisterous  and  even  rough  as  to  be  at  times  unfit 
companions  for  girls;  or  whether,  on  the  other  hand, 
girls  to  be  best  matured  ought  not  to  have  their  senti- 
mental periods  of  instability,  especially  when  we  venture 

285 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

to  raise  the  question,  whether  for  a  girl  in  the  early- 
teens,  when  her  health  for  her  whole  life  depends  upon 
normalizing  the  lunar  month,  there  is  not  something  un- 
hygienic, unnatural,  not  to  say  a  little  monstrous,  in 
school  associations  with  boys  when  she  must  suppress 
and  conceal  her  feelings  and  instinctive  promptings  at 
those  times  which  suggest  withdrawing,  to  let  nature 
do  its  beautiful  work  of  inflorescence.  It  is  a  sacred 
time  of  reverent  exemption  from  the  hard  struggle  of 
existence  in  the  world  and  from  mental  effort  in  the 
school.  Medical  specialists,  many  of  the  best  of  whom 
now  insist  that  through  this  period  she  should  be,  as  it 
were,  ''  turned  out  to  grass,"  or  should  lie  fallow,  so 
far  as  intellectual  efforts  go,  one-fourth  the  time,  no 
doubt  often  go  too  far,  but  their  unanimous  voice  should 
not  entirely  be  disregarded. 

It  is  not  this,  however,  that  I  have  chiefly  in  mind 
here,  but  the  effects  of  too  familiar  relations  and, 
especially,  of  the  identical  work,  treatment,  and  environ- 
ment of  the  modern  school. 

We  have  now  at  least  eight  good  and  independent 
statistical  studies  which  show  that  the  ideals  of  boys  from 
ten  years  on  are  almost  always  those  of  their  own  sex, 
while  girls'  ideals  are  increasingly  of  the  opposite  sex, 
or  those  of  men.  That  the  ideals  of  pubescent  girls 
are  not  found  in  the  great  and  noble  women  of  the 
world  or  in  their  literature,  but  more  and  more  in 
men,  suggests  a  divorce  between  the  ideals  adopted  and 
the  line  of  life  best  suited  to  the  interests  of  the  race. 
We  are  not  furnished  in  our  public  schools  with  ade- 
quate womanly  ideals  in  history  or  literature.  The  new 
love  of  freedom  which  women  have  lately  felt  inclines 
girls  to  abandon  the  home  for  the  office.  ''  It  surely 
can  hardly  be  called  an  ideal  education  for  women  that 

286 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  GIRLS 

permits  eighteen  out  of  one  hundred  college  girls  to 
state  boldly  that  they  would  rather  be  men  than 
women."  More  than  one-half  of  the  schoolgirls  in  these 
censuses  choose  male  ideals,  as  if  those  of  femininity  are 
disintegrating.  A  recent  writer/  in  view  of  this  fact, 
states  that  "  unless  there  is  a  change  of  trend,  we  shall 
soon  have  a  female  sex  without  a  female  character." 
In  the  progressive  numerical  feminization  of  our  schools 
most  teachers,  perhaps  naturally  and  necessarily^,  have 
more  or  less  masculine  ideals,  and  this  does  not  en- 
courage the  development  of  those  that  constitute  the 
glory  of  womanhood.  ''  At  every  age  from  eight  to 
sixteen,  girls  named  from  three  to  twenty  more  ideals 
than  boys."  ''  These  facts  indicate  a  condition  of 
diffused  interests  and  lack  of  clear-cut  purposes  and  a 
need  of  integration." 

When  we  turn  to  boys  the  case  is  different.  In  most 
public  high  schools  girls  preponderate,  especially  in  the 
upper  classes,  and  in  many  of  them  the  boys  that  re- 
main are  practically  in  a  girls'  school,  sometimes  taught 
chiefly,  if  not  solely,  by  women  teachers  at  an  age 
when  strong  men  should  be  in  control  more  than  at 
any  other  period  of  life.  Boys  need  a  different  dis- 
cipline and  moral  regimen  and  atmosphere.  They  also 
need  a  different  method  of  work.  Girls  excel  them  in 
learning  and  memorization,  accepting  studies  upon  sug- 
gestion or  authority,  but  are  often  quite  at  sea  when 
set  to  make  tests  and  experiments  that  give  individuality 
and  a  chance  for  self-expression,  which  is  one  of  the 
best  things  in  boyhood.  Girls  preponderate  in  our 
overgrown  high  school  Latin  and  algebra,  because  cus- 

1  The  Evolution  of  Ideals.  W.  G.  Chambers,  Pedagogical  Seminary, 
March,  1903,  vol.  10,  pp.  101-143.  Also,  B.  E.  Warner:  The  Young 
Woman  in  Modern  Life.     Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.,  New  York,  1903,  p.  218. 

287 


YOUTH:    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

torn  and  tradition  and,  perhaps,  advice  incline  them 
to  it.  They  preponderate  in  English  and  history  classes 
more  often,  let  us  hope,  from  inner  inclination.  The  boy 
sooner  grows  restless  in  a  curriculum  where  form  takes 
precedence  over  content.  He  revolts  at  much  method 
with  meager  matter.  He  craves  utility,  and  when  all 
these  instincts  are  denied,  without  knowing  what  is  the 
matter,  he  drops  out  of  school,  when  with  robust  tone 
and  with  a  truly  boy  life,  such  as  prevails  at  Harrow, 
Eton,  and  Rugby,  he  would  have  fought  it  through  and 
have  done  well.  This  feminization  of  the  school  spirit, 
discipline,  and  personnel  is  bad  for  boys.  Of  course, 
on  the  whole,  perhaps,  they  are  made  more  gentlemanly, 
more  at  ease,  their  manners  improved,  and  all  this  to  a 
woman  teacher  seems  excellent,  but  something  is  the  mat- 
ter with  the  boy  in  early  teens  who  can  be  truly  called  *'  a 
perfect  gentleman."  That  should  come  later,  when  the 
brute  and  animal  element  have  had  opportunity  to  work 
themselves  off  in  a  healthful  normal  w^ay.  They  still 
have  football  to  themselves,  and  are  the  majority  per- 
haps in  chemistry,  and  sometimes  in  physics,  but  there 
is  danger  of  a  settled  eviration.  The  segregation,  which 
even  some  of  our  schools  are  now  attempting,  is  always 
in  some  degree  necessary  for  full  and  complete  develop- 
ment. Just  as  the  boys'  language  is  apt  to  creep  into 
that  of  the  girl,  so  girls'  interests,  ways,  standards  and 
tastes,  which  are  crude  at  this  age,  sometimes  attract 
boys  out  of  their  orbit.  While  some  differences  are 
emphasized  by  contact,  others  are  compromised.  Boys 
tend  to  grow  content  with  mechanical,  memorized  work 
and,  excelling  on  the  lines  of  girls'  qualities,  fail  to  de- 
velop those  of  their  own.  There  is  a  little  charm  and 
bloom  rubbed  off  the  ideal  of  girlhood  by  close  con- 
tact, and  boyhood  seems  less  ideal  to  girls  at  close  range. 

288 


THE   EDUCATION   OF   GIRLS 

In  place  of  the  mystic  attraction  of  the  other  sex  that 
has  irispired  so  much  that  is  best  in  the  world,  familiar 
comradeship  brings  a  little  disenchantment.  The  im- 
pulse to  be  at  one's  best  in  the  presence  of  the  other 
sex  grows  lax  and  sex  tension  remits,  and  each  comes 
to  feel  itself  seen  through,  so  that  there  is  less  motive 
to  indulge  in  the  ideal  conduct  which  such  motives  in- 
spire, because  the  call  for  it  is  incessant.  This  disillu- 
sioning weakens  the  motivation  to  marriage  sometimes 
on  both  sides,  when  girls  grow  careless  in  their  dress 
and  too  negligent  in  their  manners,  one  of  the  best 
schools  of  Avoman's  morals;  and  when  boys  lose  all 
restraints  which  the  presence  of  girls  usually  enforces, 
there  is  a  subtle  deterioration.  Thus,  I  believe,  although 
of  course  it  is  impossible  to  prove,  that  this  is  one  of 
the  factors  of  a  decreasing  percentage  of  marriage 
among  educated  young  men  and  women. 

At  eighteen  or  twenty  the  girl  normally  reaches  a 
stage  of  first  maturity  when  her  ideas  of  life  are  amaz- 
ingly keen  and  true;  when,  if  her  body  is  developed, 
she  can  endure  a  great  deal;  when  she  is  nearest,  per- 
haps, the  ideal  of  feminine  beauty  and  perfection.  Of 
this  we  saw  illustrations  in  Chapter  YIII.  In  our  en- 
vironment, however,  there  is  a  little  danger  that  this 
age  once  well  past  there  will  slowly  arise  a  slight  sense 
of  aimlessness  or  lassitude,  unrest,  uneasiness,  as  if  one 
w^re  almost  unconsciously  feeling  along  the  wall  for  a 
door  to  which  the  key  was  not  at  hand.  Thus  some 
lose  their  bloom  and,  yielding  to  the  great  danger  of 
young  womanhood,  slowly  lapse  to  an  anxious  state 
of  expectancy,  or  desire  something  not  within  their 
reach,  and  so  the  diathesis  of  restlessness  slowly  super- 
venes. The  best  thing  about  college  life  for  girls  is, 
perhaps,    that   it   postpones   this    incipient    disappoint- 

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YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

ment;  but  it  is  a  little  pathetic  to  me  to  read,  as  I 
have  lately  done,  the  class  letters  of  hundreds  of  girl 
graduates,  out  of  college  one,  two,  or  three  years,  turn- 
ing a  little  to  art,  music,  travel,  teaching,  charity  work, 
one  after  the  other,  or  trying  to  find  something  to  which 
they  can  devote  themselves,  some  cause,  movement, 
occupation,  where  their  capacity  for  altruism  and  self- 
sacrifice  can  find  a  field.  The  tension  is  almost  im- 
perceptible, perhaps  quite  unconscious.  It  is  every- 
w^here  overborne  by  a  keen  interest  in  life,  by  a  desire 
to  know  the  world  at  first  hand,  while  susceptibilities  are 
at  their  height.  The  apple  of  intelligence  has  been 
plucked  at  perhaps  a  little  too  great  cost  of  health.  The 
purely  mental  has  not  been  quite  sufficiently  kept  back. 
The  girl  wishes  to  know  a  good  deal  more  of  the  world 
and  perfect  her  own  personality,  and  would  not  marry, 
although  every  cell  of  her  body  and  every  unconscious 
impulse  points  to  just  that  end.  Soon,  it  may  be  in 
five  or  ten  years  or  more,  the  complexion  of  ill  health 
is  seen  in  these  notes,  or  else  life  has  been  adjusted 
to  independence  and  self-support.  Many  of  these 
bachelor  women  are  magnificent  in  mind  and  body,  but 
they  lack  wifehood  and  yet  more — motherhood. 

In  fine,  we  should  use  these  facts  as  a  stimulus  to 
ask  more  searchingly  the  question  whether  the  present 
system  of  higher  education  for  both  sexes  is  not  lacking 
in  some  very  essential  elements,  and  if  so  what  these 
are.  Indeed,  considering  the  facts  that  in  our  social 
system  man  makes  the  advances  and  that  woman  is  by 
nature  more  prone  than  man  to  domesticity  and  parent- 
hood, it  is  not  impossible  that  men's  colleges  do  more  to 
unfit  for  these  than  do  those  for  women.  One  cause 
may  be  moral.  Ethics  used  to  be  taught  as  a  practical 
poAver  for  life  and  reenforced  by  religious  motives.    Now 

290 


THE   EDUCATION   OF   GIRLS 

it  is  theoretical  and  speculative  and  too  often  led  cap- 
tive by  metaphysical  and  epistemological  speculations. 
Sometimes  girls  work  or  worry, more  over  studies  and 
ideals  than  is  good  for  their  constitution,  and  boys  grow 
idle  and  indifferent,  and  this  proverbially  tends  to  bad 
habits.  Perhaps  fitting  for  college  has  been  too  hard  at 
the  critical  age  of  about  eighteen,  and  requirements  of 
honest,  persevering  work  during  college  years  too  little 
enforced,  or  grown  irksome  by  physiological  reaction  of 
lassitude  from  the  strain  of  fitting  and  entering.  Again, 
girls  mature  earlier  than  boys;  and  the  latter  who  have 
been  educated  with  them  tend  to  certain  elements  of 
maturity  and  completeness  too  early  in  life,  and  their 
growth  period  is  shortened  or  its  momentum  lessened 
by  an  atmosphere  of  femininity.  Something  is  clearly 
wrong,  and  more  so  here  than  we  have  at  present  any 
reason  to  think  is  the  case  among  the  academic  male  or 
female  youth  of  other  lands.  To  see  and  admit  that 
there  is  an  evil  very  real,  deep,  exceedingly  difficult  and 
complex  in  its  causes,  but  grave  and  demanding  a  care- 
ful reconsideration  of  current  educational  ideas  and 
practises,  is  the  first  step ;  and  this  every  thoughtful  and 
well-informed  mind,  I  believe,  must  now  take. 

It  is  utterly  impossible  without  injury  to  hold  girls 
to  the  same  standards  of  conduct,  regularity,  severe  moral 
accountability,  and  strenuous  mental  Avork  that  boys 
need.  The  privileges  and  immunities  of  her  sex  are 
inveterate,  and  with  these  the  American  girl  in  the 
middle  teens  fairly  tingles  with  a  new-born  consciousness. 
Already  she  occasionally  asserts  herself  in  the  public 
high  school  against  a  male  teacher  or  principal  who  seeks 
to  enforce  discipline  by  methods  boys  respect,  in  a  way 
that  suggests  that  the  time  is  at  hand  when  popularity 
with  her  sex  will  be  as  necessary  in  a  successful  teacher 

291 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

as  it  is  in  the  pulpit.  In  these  interesting  cases  where 
girl  sentiment  has  made  itself  felt  in  school  it  has  gen- 
erally carried  parents,  committeemen,  the  press,  and 
public  sentiment  before  it,  and  has  already  made  a 
precious  little  list  of  martyrs  whom,  were  I  an  educational 
pope,  I  would  promptly  canonize.  The  progressive  fem- 
inization of  secondary  education  works  its  subtle  demor- 
alization on  the  male  teachers  who  remain.  Public 
sentiment  would  sustain  them  in  many  parental  exactions 
with  boys  which  it  disallows  in  mixed  classes.  It 
is  hard,  too,  for  male  principals  of  schools  with  only 
female  teachers  not  to  suffer  some  deterioration  in  the 
moral  tone  of  their  virility  and  to  lose  in  the  power  to 
cope  successfully  with  men.  Not  only  is  this  often  con- 
fessed and  deplored,  but  the  incessant  compromises  the 
best  male  teachers  of  mixed  classes  must  make  with  their 
pedagogic  convictions  in  both  teaching  and  discipline 
make  the  profession  less  attractive  to  manly  men  of  large 
caliber  and  of  sound  fiber.  Again,  the  recent  rapid  in- 
crease of  girls,  the  percentage  of  which  to  population  in 
high  schools  has  in  many  communities  doubled  in  but 
little  more  than  a  decade,  almost  necessarily  involves  a 
decline  in  the  average  quality  of  girls,  perhaps  as  much 
greater  for  them  as  compared  with  boys  as  their  increase 
has  been  greater.  When  but  few  were  found  in  these  in- 
stitutions they  were  usually  picked  girls  with  superior 
tastes  and  ability,  but  now  the  average  girl  of  the  rank 
and  file  is,  despite  advanced  standards  of  admission,  of  an 
order  natively  lower.  From  this  deterioration  both  boys 
and  teachers  suffer,  even  though  the  greatest  good  for  the 
greatest  number  may  be  enhanced.  Once  more,  it  is 
generally  admitted  that  girls  in  good  boarding-schools, 
where  evenings,  food,  and  regimen  are  controlled,  are  in 
better  health  than  day  pupils  with  social,  church,  and 

292 


THE  EDUCATION  OF   GIRLS 

domestic  duties  and  perhaps  worries  to  which  boys  are 
less  subject.  This  is  the  nascent  stage  of  periodicity  to 
the  slow  normalization  of  which,  during  these  few  critical 
years,  everything  that  interferes  should  yield.  Some 
kind  of  tacit  recognition  of  this  is  indispensable,  but  in 
mixed  classes  every  form  of  such  concession  is  baffling 
and  demoralizing  to  boys. 

The  women  who  really  achieve  the  higher  culture 
should  make  it  their  "  cause  "  or  ''  mission  "  to  work 
out  the  new  hiunanistic  or  liberal  education  which  the 
old  college  claimed  to  stand  for  and  which  now  needs 
radical  reconstruction  to  meet  the  demands  of  modern 
life.  In  science  they  should  aim  to  restore  the  humanistic 
elements  of  its  history,  biography,  its  popular  features 
at  their  best,  and  its  applications  in  all  the  more  non- 
technical fields,  as  described  in  Chapter  XII,  and  feel 
responsibility  not  to  let  the  moral,  religious,  and  poetic 
aspects  of  nature  be  lost  in  utilities.  Woman  should  be 
true  to  her  generic  nature  and  take  her  stand  against  all 
premature  specialization,  and  when  the  Zeitgeist  ^  in- 
sists on  specialized  training  for  occupative  pursuits  with- 
out waiting  for  broad  foundations  to  be  laid,  she  should 
resist  all  these  influences  that  make  for  psychological  pre- 
cocity. Das  Ewig-Weihliche  ^  is  no  iridescent  fiction 
but  a  very  definable  reality,  and  means  perennial  youth. 
It  means  that  woman  at  her  best  never  outgrows  ado- 
lescence as  man  does,  but  lingers  in,  magnifies  and  glori- 
fies this  culminating  stage  of  life  with  its  all-sided  inter- 
ests, its  convertibility  of  emotions,  its  enthusiasm,  and 
zest  for  all  that  is  good,  beautiful,  true,  and  heroic.  This 
constitutes  her  freshness  and  charm,  even  in  age,  and 
makes  her  by  nature  more  humanistic  than  man,  more 


Spirit  of  the  Times.  ^  The  eternal  womanly. 

293 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

sympathetic  and  appreciative.  It  is  not  chiefly  the 
70,000  superfluous  Massachusetts  women  of  the  last  cen- 
sus, but  representatives  of  every  class  and  age  in  the  4,000 
women's  clubs  of  this  country  that  now  find  some  leis- 
ure for  general  culture  in  all  fields,  and  in  which  most 
of  them  no  doubt  surpass  their  husbands.  Those  who 
still  say  that  men  do  not  like  women  to  be  their  mental 
superiors  and  that  no  man  was  ever  won  by  the  attraction 
of  intellect,  on  the  one  hand,  and  those  who  urge  that 
women  really  want  husbands  to  be  their  intellectual  su- 
periors, both  misapprehend.  The  male  in  all  the  orders 
of  life  is  the  agent  of  variation  and  tends  by  nature  to 
expertness  and  specialization,  without  which  his  individu- 
ality is  incomplete.  In  his  chosen  line  he  would  lead  and 
be  authoritative,  and  he  rarely  seeks  partnership  in  it  in 
marriage.  This  is  no  subjection,  but  w^oman  instinctively 
respects  and  even  reveres,  and  perhaps  educated  woman 
is  coming  to  demand,  it  in  the  man  of  her  whole-hearted 
choice.  This  granted,  man  was  never  more  plastic 
to  woman's  great  work  of  creating  in  him  all  the  wide 
range  of  secondary  sex  qualities  which  constitute  his  es- 
sential manhood.  In  all  this,  the  pedagogic  fathers  we 
teach  in  the  history  of  education  are  most  of  them  about 
as  luminous  and  obsolete  as  is  patristics  for  the  religious 
teacher,  or  as  methods  of  other  countries  are  coming  to 
be  in  solving  our  own  peculiar  pedagogic  problems.  The 
relation  of  the  academically  trained  sexes  is  faintly 
typified  by  that  of  the  ideal  college  to  the  ideal  university, 
professional  or  technical  school.  This  is  the  harmony  of 
counterparts  and  constitutes  the  best  basis  of  psychic 
amphimixis.  For  the  reinstallation  of  the  humanistic 
college,  the  time  has  come  when  cultivated  woman  ought 
to  come  forward  and  render  vital  aid.  If  she  does  so 
and  helps  to  evolve  a  high  school  and  an  A.  B.  course  that 

294 


THE   EDUCATION   OF  GIRLS 

is  truly  liberal,  it  will  not  only  fit  her  nature  and  needs 
far  better  than  anything  now  existing,  but  young  men  at 
the  humanistic  stage  of  their  own  education  will  seek  to 
profit  by  it,  and  she  will  thus  repay  her  debt  to  man  in 
the  past  by  aiding  him  to  de-universitize  the  college  and 
to  rescue  secondary  education  from  its  gravest  dangers. 

But  even  should  all  this  be  done,  coeducation  would  by 
no  means  be  thus  justified.  If  adolescent  boys  normally 
pass  through  a  generalized  or  even  feminized  stage  of 
psychic  development  in  which  they  are  peculiarly  plastic 
to  the  guidance  of  older  women  who  have  such  rare  in- 
sight into  their  nature,  such  infinite  sympathy  and 
patience  with  all  the  symptoms  of  their  storm  and  stress 
metamorphosis,  when  they  seek  everything  by  turns  and 
nothing  long,  and  if  young  men  will  forever  afterward 
understand  woman's  nature  better  for  living  out  more 
fully  this  stage  of  their  lives  and  will  fail  to  do  so  if  it 
is  abridged  or  dw^arfed,  it  by  no  means  follows  that  inti- 
mate daily  and  class-room  association  with  girls  of  their 
own  age  is  necessary  or  best.  The  danger  of  this  is  that 
the  boy 's  instinct  to  assert  his  own  manhood  will  thus  be 
made  premature  and  excessive,  that  he  will  react  against 
general  culture,  in  the  capacity  for  which  girls,  who  are 
older  than  boys  at  the  same  age,  naturally  excel  them. 
Companionship  and  comparisons  incline  him  to  take  pre- 
mature refuge  in  some  one  talent  that  emphasizes  his  psy- 
cho-sexual difference  too  soon.  Again,  he  is  farther  from 
nubile  maturity  than  the  girl  classmate  of  his  own  age, 
and  coeducation  and  marriage  between  them  are  prone 
to  violate  the  important  physiological  law  of  disparity 
that  requires  the  husband  to  be  some  years  the  wife's 
senior,  both  in  their  own  interests,  as  maturity  begins  to 
decline  to  age,  and  in  those  of  their  offspring.  Thus  the 
young  man  with  his  years  of  restraint  and  probation 
20  295 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

ahead,  and  his  inflammable  desires,  is  best  removed  from 
the  half-conscious  cerebrations  about  wedlock,  inevitably 
more  insistent  with  constant  girl  companionship.  If  he 
resists  this  during  all  the  years  of  his  apprenticeship,  he 
grows  more  immune  and  inhibit ive  of  it  when  its  proper 
hour  arrives,  and  perhaps  becomes  in  soul  a  bachelor 
before  his  time.  In  this  side  of  his  nature  he  is  forever 
incommensurate  with  and  unintelligible  to  woman,  be  she 
even  teacher,  sister,  or  mother.  Better  some  risk  of  gross 
thoughts  and  even  acts,  to  which  phylogeny  and  recapit- 
ulation so  strongly  incline  him,  than  this  subtle  eviration. 
But  if  the  boy  is  unduly  repelled  from  the  sphere  of 
girls'  interests,  the  girl  is  in  some  danger  of  being  un- 
duly drawn  to  his,  and,  as  we  saw  above,  of  forgetting 
some  of  the  ideals  of  her  own  sex.  Riper  in  mind  and 
body  than  her  male  classmate,  and  often  excelling  him 
in  the  capacity  of  acquisition,  nearer  the  age  of  her  full 
maturity  than  he  to  his,  he  seems  a  little  too  crude  and 
callow  to  fulfil  the  ideals  of  manhood  normal  to  her  age 
which  point  to  older  and  riper  men.  In  all  that  makes 
sexual  attraction  best,  a  classmate  of  her  own  age  is  too 
undeveloped,  and  so  she  often  suffers  mute  disenchant- 
ment, and  even  if  engagement  be  dreamed  of,  it  would  be, 
on  her  part,  with  unconscious  reservations  if  not  with 
some  conscious  renunciation  of  ideals.  Thus  the  boy  is 
correct  in  feeling  himself  understood  and  seen  through 
by  his  girl  classmates  to  a  degree  that  is  sometimes  quite 
distasteful  to  him,  while  the  girl  finds  herself  misunder- 
stood by  and  disappointed  in  men.  Boys  arrive  at  the 
humanistic  stage  of  culture  later  than  girls  and  pass  it 
sooner;  and  to  find  them  already  there  and  with  their 
greater  aptitude  excelling  him,  is  not  an  inviting  situa- 
tion, and  so  he  is  tempted  to  abridge  or  cut  it  out  and  to 
hasten  on  and  be  mature  and  professional  before  his  time, 

296 


THE   EDUCATION   OF   GIRLS 

for  thus  he  gravitates  toward  his  normal  relation  to  her 
sex  of  expert  mastership  on  some  bread-  or  fame-winning 
line.  Of  course,  these  influences  are  not  patent,  demon- 
strable by  experiment,  or  measurable  by  statistics ;  but  I 
have  come  to  believe  that,  like  many  other  facts  and  laws, 
they  have  a  reality  and  a  dominance  that  is  all-pervasive 
and  inescapable,  and  that  they  will  ultimately  prevail 
over  economic  motives  and  traditions. 

To  be  a  true  woman  means  to  be  yet  more  mother 
than  wife.  The  madonna  conception  expresses  man's 
highest  comprehension  of  woman's  real  nature.  Sexual 
relations  are  brief,  but  love  and  care  of  offspring  are  long. 
The  elimination  of  maternity  is  one  of  the  great  calam- 
ities, if  not  diseases,  of  our  age.  Marholm  ^  points  out 
at  length  how  art  again  to-day  gives  woman  a  waspish 
waist  with  no  abdomen,  as  if  to  carefully  score  away 
every  trace  of  her  mission ;  usually  w4th  no  child  in  her 
arms  or  even  in  sight;  a  mere  figurine,  calculated  per- 
haps to  entice,  but  not  to  bear;  incidentally  degrading 
the  artist  who  depicts  her  to.  a  fashion-plate  painter,  per- 
haps with  suggestions  of  the  arts  of  toilet,  cosmetics,  and 
coquetry,  as  if  to  promote  decadent  reaction  to  decadent 
stimuli.  As  in  the  Munchausen  tale,  the  wolf  slowly  ate 
the  running  nag  from  behind  until  he  found  himself  in 
the  harness,  so  in  the  disoriented  woman  the  mistress, 
virtuous  and  otherwise,  is  slowly  supplanting  the  mother. 
Please  she  must,  even  though  she  can  not  admire,  and  can 
so  easily  despise  men  who  can  not  lead  her,  although  she 
become  thereby  lax  and  vapid. 

The  more  exhausted  men  become,  whether  by  over- 
work, unnatural  city  life,  alcohol,  recrudescent  poly- 
gamic inclinations,  exclusive  devotion  to  greed  and  pelf; 

1  The    Psychology    of    Woman.     Translated    by    G.    A.    Etchison. 
Richards,  London,  1899. 

297 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

whether  they  become  weak,  stooping,  blear-eyed,  bald- 
headed,  bow-legged,  thin-shanked,  or  gross,  coarse,  bar- 
baric, and  bestial,  the  more  they  lose  the  power  to  lead 
woman  or  to  arouse  her  nature,  which  is  essentially 
passive.  Thus  her  perversions  are  his  fault.  IMan,  be- 
fore he  lost  the  soil  and  piety,  was  not  only  her  protector 
and  provider,  but  her  priest.  He  not  only  supported 
and  defended,  but  inspired  the  souls  of  women,  so  admir- 
ably calculated  to  receive  and  elaborate  suggestions,  but 
not  to  originate  them.  In  their  inmost  souls  even  young 
girls  often  experience  disenchantment,  find  men  little  and 
no  heroes,  and  so  cease  to  revere  and  begin  to  think 
stupidly  of  them  as  they  think  coarsely  of  her.  Some- 
times the  girlish  conceptions  of  men  are  too  romantic  and 
exalted ;  often  the  intimacy  of  school  and  college  wear  off 
a  charm,  while  man  must  not  forget  that  to-day  he  too 
often  fails  to  realize  the  just  and  legitimate  expectations 
and  ideals  of  women.  If  women  confide  themselves,  body 
and  soul,  less  to  him  than  he  desires,  it  is  not  she,  but  he, 
who  is  often  chiefly  to  blame.  Indeed,  in  some  psychic 
respects,  it  seems  as  if  in  human  society  the  processes  of 
subordinating  the  male  to  the  female,  carried  so  far  in 
some  of  the  animal  species,  had  already  begun.  If  he  is 
not  worshiped  as  formerly,  it  is  because  he  is  less  worship- 
ful or  more  effeminate,  less  vigorous  and  less  able  to  ex- 
cite and  retain  the  great  love  of  true,  not  to  say  great, 
women.  Where  marriage  and  maternity  are  of  less  su- 
preme interest  to  an  increasing  number  of  women,  there 
are  various  results,  the  chief  of  which  are  as  follows : 

1.  Women  grow  dollish ;  sink  more  or  less  consciously 
to  man's  level;  gratify  his  desires  and  even  his  selfish 
caprices,  but  exact  in  return  luxury  and  display,  growing 
vain  as  he  grows  sordid ;  thus,  while  submitting,  conquer- 
ing,  and  tyrannizing  over   him,   content  with   present 

298 


THE   EDUCATION   OF   GIRLS 

worldly  pleasure,  unmindful  of  the  past,  the  future,  or 
the  above.  This  may  react  to  intersexual  antagonism 
until  man  comes  to  hate  woman  as  a  witch,  or,  as  in  the 
days  of  celibacy,  consider  sex  a  wile  of  the  devil.  Along 
these  lines  even  the  stage  is  beginning  to  represent  the 
tragedies  of  life. 

2.  The  disappointed  woman  in  whom  something  is 
dying  comes  to  assert  her  own  ego  and  more  or  less  con- 
sciously to  make  it  an  end,  aiming  to  possess  and  realize 
herself  fully  rather  than  to  transmit.  Despairing  of  her- 
self as  a  woman,  she  asserts  her  lower  rights  in  the  place 
of  her  one  great  right  to  be  loved.  The  desire  for  love 
may  be  transmuted  into  the  desire  for  knowledge,  or 
outward  achievement  become  a  substitute  for  inner 
content.  Failing  to  respect  herself  as  a  productive  or- 
ganism, she  gives  vent  to  personal  ambitions ;  seeks  inde- 
pendence; comes  to  know  very  plainly  what  she  wants; 
perhaps  becomes  intellectually  emancipated,  and  substi- 
tutes science  for  religion,  or  the  doctor  for  the  priest, 
w4th  the  all-sided  impressionability  characteristic  of  her 
sex  w^hich,  when  cultivated,  is  so  like  an  awakened  child. 
She  perhaps  even  affects  mannish  ways,  unconsciously 
copying  from  those  not  most  manly,  or  comes  to  feel  that 
she  has  been  robbed  of  something;  competes  with  men, 
but  sometimes  where  they  are  most  sordid,  brutish,  and 
strongest ;  always  expecting,  but  never  finding,  she  turns 
successively  to  art,  science,  literature,  and  reforms; 
craves  especially  w^ork  that  she  can  not  do;  and  seeks 
stimuli  for  feelings  which  have  never  found  their  legiti- 
mate expression. 

3.  Another  type,  truer  to  woman's  nature,  subordi- 
nates self;  goes  beyond  personal  happiness;  adopts  the 
motto  of  self-immolation ;  enters  a  life  of  service,  denial, 
and  perhaps  mortification,  like  the  Countess  Schimmel- 

299 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

mann;  and  perhaps  becomes  a  devotee,  a  saint,  and, 
if  need  be,  a  martyr,  but  all  with  modesty,  humility, 
and  with  a  shrinking  from  publicity. 

In  our  civilization,  I  believe  that  bright  girls  of  good 
environment  of  eighteen  or  nineteen,  or  even  seventeen, 
have  already  reached  the  above-mentioned  peculiar  stage 
of  first  maturity,  when  they  see  the  world  at  first  hand, 
when  the  senses  are  at  their  very  best,  their  susceptibil- 
ities and  their  insights  the  keenest,  tension  at  its  highest, 
plasticity  and  all-sided  interests  most  developed,  and 
their  whole  psychic  soil  richest  and  rankest  and  sprout- 
ing everywhere  with  the  tender  shoots  of  everything 
both  good  and  bad.  Some  such — Stella  Klive,  Mary 
MacLane,  Hilma  Strandberg,  Marie  Bashkirtseff — have 
been  veritable  spies  upon  woman's  nature;  have  revealed 
the  characterlessness  normal  to  the  prenubile  period  in 
which  everything  is  kept  tentative  and  plastic,  and 
where  life  seems  to  have  least  unity,  aim,  or  purpose.  By 
and  by  perhaps  they  will  see  in  all  their  scrappy  past,  if 
not  order  and  coherence,  a  justification,  and  then  alone 
will  they  realize  that  life  is  governed  by  motives  deeper 
than  those  which  are  conscious  or  even  personal.  This 
is  the  age  when,  if  ever,  no  girl  should  be  compelled.  It 
is  the  experiences  of  this  age,  never  entirely  obliterated 
in  women,  that  enable  them  to  take  adolescent  boys 
seriously,  as  men  can  rarely  do,  in  w^hom  these  experi- 
ences are  more  limited  in  range  though  no  less  intense. 
It  is  this  stage  in  woman  which  is  most  unintelligible  to 
man  and  even  unrealized  to  herself.  It  is  the  echoes  from 
it  that  make  vast  numbers  of  mothers  pursue  the  various 
branches  of  culture,  often  half  secretly,  to  maintain  their 
position  with  their  college  sons  and  daughters,  with  their 
husbands,  or  with  society. 

But  in  a  very  few  years,  I  believe  even  in  the  early 
300 


THE  EDUCATION   OF  GIRLS 

twenties  with  American  girls,  along  with  rapidly  in- 
creasing development  of  capacity  there  is  also  observable 
the  beginnings  of  loss  and  deterioration.  Unless  mar- 
riage comes  there  is  lassitude,  subtle  symptoms  of  inva- 
lidism, the  germs  of  a  rather  aimless  dissatisfaction  with 
life,  a  little  less  interest,  curiosity,  and  courage,  certain 
forms  of  self-pampering,  the  resolution  to  be  happy, 
though  at  too  great  cost ;  and  thus  the  clear  air  of  morn- 
ing begins  to  haze  over  and  unconsciously  she  begins  to 
grope.  By  thirty,  she  is  perhaps  goaded  into  more  or 
less  sourness ;  has  developed  more  petty  self-indulgences ; 
has  come  to  feel  a  right  to  happiness  almost  as  passion- 
ately as  the  men  of  the  French  Revolution  and  as  the 
women  in  their  late  movement  for  enfranchisement  felt 
for  liberty.  Very  likely  she  has  turned  to  other  women 
and  entered  into  innocent  Platonic  pairing-off  relations 
with  some  one.  There  is  a  little  more  affectation,  play- 
ing a  role,  and  interest  in  dress  and  appearance  is  either 
less  or  more  specialized  and  definite.  Perhaps  she  has 
already  begun  to  be  a  seeker  who  will  perhaps  find,  lose, 
and  seek  again.  Her  temper  is  modified ;  there  is  a  slight 
stagnation  of  soul ;  a  craving  for  work  or  travel ;  a  love 
of  children  with  flitting  thoughts  of  adopting  one,  or 
else  aversion  to  them;  an  analysis  of  psychic  processes 
until  they  are  weakened  and  insight  becomes  too  clear; 
a  sense  of  responsibility  without  an  object ;  a  slight  gen- 
eral malaise  and  a  sense  that  society  is  a  false  "  mar- 
garine "  affair;  revolt  against  those  that  insist  that  in 
her  child  the  real  value  of  a  woman  is  revealed.  There 
are  alternations  between  excessive  self-respect  which  de- 
mands something  almost  like  adoration  of  the  other  sex 
and  self-distrust,  with,  it  may  be,  many  dreameries 
about  forbidden  subjects  and  about  the  relations  of  the 
sexes  generally. 

301 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

A  new  danger,  the  greatest  in  the  history  of  her  sex, 
now  impends,  viz.,  arrest,  complacency,  and  a  sense  of 
finality  in  the  most  perilous  first  stage  of  higher  educa- 
tion for  girls,  when,  after  all,  little  has  actually  yet  been 
won  save  only  the  right  and  opportunity  to  begin  recon- 
structions, so  that  now,  for  the  first  time  in  history, 
methods  and  matter  could  be  radically  transformed  to 
fit  the  nature  and  needs  of  girls.  Now  most  female  fac- 
ulties, trustees,  and  students  are  content  to  ape  the 
newest  departures  in  some  one  or  more  male  institutions 
as  far  as  their  means  or  obvious  limitations  make  possi- 
ble with  a  servility  which  is  often  abject  and  with  rarely 
ever  a  thought  of  any  adjustment,  save  the  most  super- 
ficial, to  sex.  It  is  the  easiest,  and  therefore  the  most 
common,  view  typically  expressed  by  the  female  head  of 
a  very  successful  institution,^  who  was  ' '  early  convinced 
in  my  teaching  experience  that  the  methods  for  mental 
development  for  boys  and  girls  applied  equally  without 
regard  to  sex,  and  I  have  carried  the  same  thought  when 
I  began  to  develop  the  physical,  and  filled  my  gymnasium 
with  the  ordinary  appliances  used  in  men's  gymnasia." 
There  is  no  sex  in  mind  or  in  science,  it  is  said,  but  it 
might  as  well  be  urged  that  there  is  no  age,  and  hence  that 
all  methods  adapted  to  teaching  at  different  stages  of  de- 
velopment may  be  ignored.  That  woman  can  do  many 
things  as  well  as  man  does  not  prove  that  she  ought  to  do 
the  same  things,  or  that  man-made  ways  are  the  best  for 
her.  Mrs.  Alice  Freeman  Palmer  -  was  right  in  saying 
that  woman's  education  has  all  the  perplexities  of  that 

1  Physical  Development  of  Women  and  Children.  By  Miss  M.  E. 
Allen.     American  Association  for  Physical  Education,  April,  1890. 

2  A  Review  of  the  Higher  Education  of  Women.  Forum,  September, 
1891,  vol.  12,  pp.  25-40.  See  also  G.  von  Bunge:  Die  zunehmende  Un- 
fjihigkeit  der  Frauen  ihre  Kinder  zu  stillen.  Miinchcn,  Reinhardt,  1903, 
3d  ed.     Also  President  Harper's  Decennial  Report,  pp.  xciv-cxi. 

302 


THE   EDUCATION   OF  GIRLS 

of  man,  and  many  more,  still  more  difficult  and  intricate, 
of  its  own. 

Hence,  we  must  conclude  that,  w^hile  women's  col- 
leges have  to  a  great  extent  solved  the  problem  of  special 
technical  training,  they  have  done  as  yet  very  little  to 
solve  the  larger  one  of  the  proper  education  of  woman. 
To  assume  that  the  latter  question  is  settled,  as  is  so  often 
done,  is  disastrous.  I  have  forced  myself  to  go  through 
many  elaborate  reports  of  meetings  where  female  educa- 
tion was  discussed  by  those  supposed  to  be  competent; 
but  as  a  rule,  not  without  rare,  striking  exceptions,  these 
proceedings  are  smitten  with  the  same  sterile  and  com- 
placent artificiality  that  was  so  long  the  curse  of  woman 's 
life.  I  deem  it  almost  reprehensible  that,  save  a  few 
general  statistics,  the  women's  colleges  have  not  only 
made  no  study  themselves  of  the  larger  problems  that 
impend,  but  have  often  maintained  a  repellent  attitude 
toward  others  who  wished  to  do  so.  No  one  that  I  know 
of  connected  with  any  of  these  institutions,  where  the 
richest  material  is  going  to  waste,  is  making  any  serious 
and  competent  research  on  lines  calculated  to  bring  out 
the  psycho-phj^siological  differences  between  the  sexes, 
and  those  in  authority  are  either  conservative  by  constitu- 
tion or  else  intimidated  because  public  opinion  is  still 
liable  to  panics  if  discussion  here  becomes  scientific  and 
fundamental,  and  so  tend  to  keep  prudery  and  the  old 
habit  of  ignoring  everything  that  pertains  to  sex  in 
countenance. 

Again,  while  I  sympathize  profoundly  with  the  claim 
of  w^oman  for  every  opportunity  which  she  can  fill,  and 
yield  to  none  in  appreciation  of  her  ability,  I  insist  that 
the  cardinal  defect  in  the  woman's  college  is  that  it  is 
based  upon  the  assumption,  implied  and  often  expressed, 
if  not  almost  universally  acknowledged,  that  girls  should 

303 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

primarily  be  trained  to  independence  and  self-support, 
and  that  matrimony  and  motherhood,  if  it  come,  will  take 
care  of  itself,  or,  as  some  even  urge,  is  thus  best  provided 
for.  If  these  colleges  are,  as  the  above  statistics  indicate, 
chiefly  devoted  to  the  training  of  those  who  do  not  marry, 
or  if  they  are  to  educate  for  celibacy,  this  is  right.  These 
institutions  may  perhaps  come  to  be  training  stations  of 
a  new-old  type,  the  agamic  or  even  agenic  woman,  be  she 
aunt,  maid — old  or  young — nun,  school-teacher,  or  bach- 
elor woman.  I  recognize  the  very  great  debt  the  world 
owes  to  members  of  this  very  diverse  class  in  the  past. 
Some  of  them  have  illustrated  the  very  highest  ideals  of 
self-sacrifice,  service,  and  devotion  in  giving  to  mankind 
what  was  meant  for  husband  and  children.  Some  of 
them  belong  to  the  class  of  superfluous  women,  and  others 
illustrate  the  noblest  type  of  altruism  and  have  im- 
poverished the  heredity  of  the  world  to  its  loss,  as  did  the 
monks,  who  Leslie  Stephens  thinks  contributed  to  bring 
about  the  Dark  Ages,  because  they  were  the  best  and 
most  highly  selected  men  of  their  age  and,  by  withdraw- 
ing from  the  function  of  heredity  and  leaving  no  pos- 
terity, caused  Europe  to  degenerate.  Modern  ideas  and 
training  are  now  doing  this,  whether  for  racial  weal  or 
woe  can  not  yet  be  determined,  for  many  whom  nature 
designed  for  model  mothers. 

The  bachelor  woman  is  an  interesting  illustration  of 
Spencer's  law  of  the  inverse  relation  of  individuation 
and  genesis.  The  completely  developed  individual  is 
always  a  terminal  representative  in  her  line  of  descent. 
She  has  taken  up  and  utilized  in  her  own  life  all  that  was 
meant  for  her  descendants,  and  has  so  overdrawn  her 
account  with  heredity  that,  like  every  perfectly  and 
completely  developed  individual,  she  is  also  completely 
sterile.     This  is  the  very  apotheosis  of  selfishness  from  the 

304 


THE  EDUCATION   OF  GIRLS 

standpoint  of  every  biological  ethics.  While  the  com- 
plete man  can  do  and  sometimes  does  this,  woman  has 
a  far  greater  and  very  peculiar  power  of  overdrawing  her 
reserves.  First  she  loses  mammary  functions,  so  that 
should  she  undertake  maternity  its  functions  are  incom- 
pletely performed  because  she  can  not  nurse,  and  this 
implies  defective  motherhood  and  leaves  love  of  the 
child  itself  defective  and  maimed,  for  the  mother  who 
has  never  nursed  can  not  love  or  be  loved  aright  by  her 
child.  It  crops  out  again  in  the  abnormal  or  especially 
incomplete  development  of  her  offspring,  in  the  critical 
years  of  adolescence,  although  they  may  have  been  health- 
ful before,  and  a  less  degree  of  it  perhaps  is  seen  in  the 
diminishing  families  of  cultivated  mothers  in  the  one- 
child  system.  These  women  are  the  intellectual  equals  and 
often  the  superiors  of  the  men  they  meet ;  they  are  very 
attractive  as  companions,  like  Miss  IMehr,  the  university 
student,  in  Hauptmann  's  ' '  Lonely  Lives, ' '  who  alienated 
the  young  husband  from  his  noble  wife;  they  enjoy  all 
the  keen  pleasures  of  intellectual  activity ;  their  very  look, 
step,  and  bearing  is  free;  their  mentality  makes  them 
good  fellows  and  companionable  in  all  the  broad  intel- 
lectual spheres ;  to  converse  with  them  is  as  charming  and 
attractive  for  the  best  men  as  was  Socrates 's  discourse 
with  the  accomplished  hetserre ;  they  are  at  home  with  the 
racquet  and  on  the  golf  links ;  they  are  splendid  friends ; 
their  minds,  in  all  their  widening  areas  of  contact,  are 
as  attractive  as  their  bodies;  and  the  world  owes  much 
and  is  likely  to  owe  far  more  to  high  Platonic  friendships 
of  this  kind.  These  women  are  often  in  every  way  mag- 
nificent, only  they  are  not  mothers,  and  sometimes  have 
very  little  wifehood  in  them,  and  to  attempt  to  marry 
them  to  develop  these  functions  is  one  of  the  unique  and 
too   frequent  tragedies  of  modern  life   and  literature. 

305 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

Some,  though  by  no  means  all,  of  them  are  functionally 
castrated;  some  actively  deplore  the  necessity  of  child- 
bearing,  and  perhaps  are  parturition  phobiacs,  and  abhor 
the  limitations  of  married  life ;  they  are  incensed  when- 
ever attention  is  called  to  the  functions  peculiar  to  their 
sex,  and  the  careful  consideration  of  problems  of  the 
monthly  rest  are  thought ' '  not  fit  for  cultivated  women. ' ' 
The  slow  evolution  of  this  type  is  probably  inevitable 
as  civilization  advances,  and  their  training  is  a  noble 
function.  Already  it  has  produced  minds  of  the  great- 
est acumen  who  have  made  very  valuable  contributions 
to  science,  and  far  more  is  to  be  expected  of  them  in  the 
future.  Indeed,  it  may  be  their  noble  function  to  lead 
their  sex  out  into  the  higher,  larger  li»fe,  and  the  deeper 
sense  of  its  true  position  and  function,  for  which  I  plead. 
Hitherto  woman  has  not  been  able  to  solve  her  own 
problems.  While  she  has  been  more  religious  than  man, 
there  have  been  few  great  women  preachars;  while  she 
has  excelled  in  teaching  young  children,  there  have  been 
few  Pestalozzis,  or  even  Froebels ;  while  her  invalidism  is 
a  complex  problem,  she  has  turned  to  man  in  her  diseases. 
This  is  due  to  the  very  intuitiveness  and  naivete  of  her 
nature.  But  now  that  her  world  is  so  rapidly  widening, 
she  is  in  danger  of  losing  her  cue.  She  must  be  studied 
objectively  and  laboriously  as  we  study  children,  and 
partly  by  men,  because  their  sex  must  of  necessity  always 
remain  objective  and  incommensurate  with  regard  to 
woman,  and  therefore  more  or  less  theoretical.  Again,  in 
these  days  of  intense  new  interest  in  feelings,  emotions, 
and  sentiments,  when  many  a  psychologist  now  envies 
and,  like  Schleiermacher,  devoutly  wishes  he  could  be- 
come a  woman,  he  can  never  really  understand  das  Ewig- 
Weihliche,^  one  of  the  two  supreme  oracles  of  guidance 

1  The  eternal  womanly. 

306 


THE   EDUCATION   OF   GIRLS 

in  life,  because  he  is  a  man;  and  here  the  cultivated 
woman  must  explore  the  nature  of  her  sex  as  man  can 
not,  and  become  its  mouthpiece.  In  many  of  the  new 
fields  opening  in  biology  since  Darwin,  in  embryology, 
botany,  the  study  of  children,  animals,  savages  (witness 
Miss  Fletcher),  sociological  investigation,  to  say  nothing 
of  all  the  vast  body  of  work  that  requires  painstaking 
detail,  perseverance,  and  conscience,  woman  has  supe- 
rior ability,  or  her  very  sex  gives  her  peculiar  advan- 
tages where  she  is  to  lead  and  achieve  great  things  in  en- 
larging the  kingdom  of  man.  Perhaps,  too,  the  present 
training  of  women  may  in  the  end  develop  those  who 
shall  one  day  attain  a  true  self-knowledge  and  lead 
in  the  next  step  of  devising  a  scheme  that  shall  fit 
woman's  nature  and  needs. 

For  the  slow  evolution  of  such  a  scheme,  we  must  first 
of  all  distinctly  and  ostensively  invert  the  present  maxim, 
and  educate  primarily  and  chiefly  for  motherhood,  assum- 
ing that,  if  that  does  not  come,  single  life  can  best  take 
care  of  itself,  because  it  is  less  intricate  and  lower  and  its 
needs  far  more  easily  met.  While  girls  may  be  trained 
with  boys,  coeducation  should  cease  at  the  dawn  of  ado- 
lescence, at  least  for  a  season.  Great  daily  intimacy  be- 
tween the  sexes  in  high  school,  if  not  in  college,  tends  to 
rub  off  the  bloom  and  delicacy  which  can  develop  in  each, 
and  girls  suffer  in  this  respect,  let  us  repeat,  far  more 
than  boys.  The  familiar  comradeship  that  ignores  sex 
should  be  left  to  the  agenic  class.  To  the  care  of  their 
institutions,  we  leave  with  pious  and  reverent  hands  the 
ideals  inspired  by  characters  like  Hypatia,  Madame  de 
Stael,  the  Misses  Cobb,  Martineau,  Fuller,  Bronte,  by 
George  Eliot,  George  Sand,  and  Mrs.  Browning;  and 
while  accepting  and  profiting  by  what  they  have  done, 
and  acknowledging  every  claim  for  their  abilities  and 

307 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

achievements,  prospective  mothers  must  not  be  allowed  to 
forget  a  still  larger  class  of  ideal  women,  both  in  history 
and  literature,  from  the  Holy  Mother  to  Beatrice 
Clotilda  de  Vaux,  and  all  those  who  have  inspired  men 
to  great  deeds,  and  the  choice  and  far  richer  anthology 
of  noble  mothers. 

We  must  premise,  too,  that  she  must  not  be  petted  or 
pampered  with  regimen  or  diet  unsuited  to  her  needs; 
left  to  find  out  as  best  she  can,  from  surreptitious  or 
unworthy  sources,  what  she  most  of  all  needs  to  know; 
must  recognize  that  our  present  civilization  is  hard  on 
woman  and  that  she  is  not  yet  adjusted  to  her  social  en- 
vironment; that  as  she  was  of  old  accused  of  having 
given  man  the  apple  of  knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  so 
he  now  is  liable  to  a  perhaps  no  less  serious  indictment 
of  having  given  her  the  apple  of  intellectualism  and 
encouraged  her  to  assume  his  standards  at  the  expense 
of  health.  We  must  recognize  that  riches  are  probably 
harder  on  her,  on  the  whole,  than  poverty,  and  that 
poor  parents  should  not  labor  too  hard  to  exempt  her 
from  its  wholesome  discipline.  The  expectancy  of 
change  so  stamped  upon  her  sex  by  heredity  as  she  ad- 
vances into  maturity  must  not  be  perverted  into  uneasi- 
ness, or  her  soul  sown  with  the  tares  of  ambition  or  fired 
by  intersexual  competition  and  driven  on,  to  quote  Dr. 
R.  T.  Edes,  "  by  a  tireless  sort  of  energy  which  is  a 
compound  of  conscience,  ambition,  and  desire  to  please, 
plus  a  peculiar  female  obstinacy. ' '  If  she  is  bright,  she 
must  not  be  overworked  in  the  school  factory,  studying 
in  a  way  which  parodies  Hood's  "  Song  of  the  Shirt  "; 
and  if  dull  or  feeble,  she  should  not  be  worried  by  precep- 
tresses like   an   eminent   lady   principal,^   who   thought 

*  Physical   Hindrances  to  Teaching  Girls,  by  Charlotte  W.  Porter. 
Forum,  September,  1891,  vol.  12,  pp.  41-49. 

308 


THE   EDUCATION   OF   GIRLS 

girls'  weakness  is  usually  imaginary  or  laziness,  and  that 
doctors  are  to  blame  for  suggesting  illness  and  for  in- 
timating that  men  will  have  to  choose  between  a  healthy 
animal  and  an  educated  invalid  for  a  wife. 

Without  specifying  here  details  or  curricula,  the 
ideals  that  should  be  striven  toward  in  the  intermediate 
and  collegiate  education  of  adolescent  girls  with  the 
proper  presupposition  of  motherhood,  and  which  are 
already  just  as  practicable  as  Abbotsholme  ^  or  L'Ecole 
des  Roches,^  may  be  rudely  indicated  somewhat  as  follows. 

First,  the  ideal  institution  for  the  training  of  girls 
from  twelve  or  thirteen  on  into  the  twenties,  when  the 
period  most  favorable  to  motherhood  begins,  should  be 
in  the  country  in  the  midst  of  hills,  the  climbing  of 
which  is  the  best  stimulus  for  heart  and  lungs,  and  tends 
to  mental  elevation  and  breadth  of  view.  There  should 
be  water  for  boating,  bathing,  and  skating,  aquaria  and 
aquatic  life ;  gardens  both  for  kitchen  vegetables  and 
horticulture;  forests  for  their  seclusion  and  religious 
awe ;  good  roads,  walks,  and  paths  that  tempt  to  walking 
and  wheeling ;  playgrounds  and  space  for  golf  and  tennis, 
with  large  covered  but  unheated  space  favorable  for 
recreations  in  weather  really  too  bad  for  out-of-door  life 
and  for  those  indisposed ;  and  plenty  of  nooks  that  permit 
each  to  be  alone  with  nature,  for  this  develops  inward- 
ness, poise,  and  character,  yet  not  too  great  remoteness 
from  the  city  for  a  wise  utilization  of  its  advantages  at 
intervals.  All  that  can  be  called  environment  is  even 
more  important  for  girls  than  boys,  significant  as  it  is 
for  the  latter. 

1  Abbotsholme,  1 889-1899:  or  Ten  Years'  Work  in  an  Educational 
Laboratory,  by  Cecil  Reddie.     G.  Allen,  London,  1900. 

2  See  L'Ecole  des  Roches,  a  School  of  the  Twentieth  Century,  by 
T.  R.  Croswell.  Pedagogical  Seminary,  December,  1900,  vol.  7,  pp. 
479-^91. 

309 


YOUTH  :  ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

The  first  aim,  which  should  dominate  every  item,  peda- 
gogic method  and  matter,  should  be  health — a  momen- 
tous word  that  looms  up  beside  holiness,  to  which  it  is 
etymologically  akin.  The  new  hygiene  of  the  last  few 
years  should  be  supreme  and  make  these  academic  areas 
sacred  to  the  cult  of  the  goddess  Hygeia.  Only  those 
who  realize  what  advances  have  been  made  in  health  cul- 
ture and  know  something  of  its  vast  new  literature  can 
realize  all  that  this  means.  The  health  of  woman  is,  as 
we  have  seen,  if  possible  even  more  important  for  the 
welfare  of  the  race  than  that  of  man ;  and  the  influence 
of  her  body  upon  her  mind  is,  in  a  sense,  greater,  so  that 
its  needs  should  be  supreme  and  primary.  Foods  should 
favor  the  completest  digestion,  so  that  metabolism  be 
on  the  highest  plane.  The  dietary  should  be  abundant, 
plain,  and  varied,  and  cooked  with  all  the  refinements 
possible  in  the  modern  cooking-school,  which  should  be 
one  of  its  departments,  with  limited  use  of  rich  foods  or 
desserts  and  stimulating  drinks,  but  with  wholesome 
proximity  to  dairy  and  farm.  Nutrition  is  the  first  law 
of  health  and  happiness,  the  prime  condition  and  creator 
of  euphoria;  and  the  appetite  should  be,  as  it  always  is 
if  unperverted,  like  a  kind  of  somatic  conscience  stead- 
fastly pointing  toward  the  true  pole  of  needs. 

Sleep  should  be  regular,  with  a  fixed  retiring  hour 
and  curfew,  on  plain  beds  in  rooms  of  scrupulous  neat- 
ness reserved  chiefly  for  it  with  every  precaution  for 
quiet,  and,  if  possible,  with  windows  more  or  less  open  the 
year  round,  and,  like  other  rooms,  never  overheated. 
Bathing  in  moderation,  and  especially  dress  and  toilet 
should  be  almost  raised  to  fine  arts  and  objects  of  con- 
stant suggestion.  Each  student  should  have  three  rooms, 
for  bath,  sleep,  and  study,  respectively,  and  be  responsi- 
ble for  their  care,  with  every  encouragement  for  express- 

310 


THE  EDUCATION   OF  GIRLS 

ing  individual  tastes,  but  with  an  all-dominant  idea  of 
simplicity,  convenience,  refinement,  and  elegance,  with- 
out luxury.  Girls  need  to  go  away  from  home  a  good 
part  of  every  year  to  escape  the  indiscretion  and  often 
the  coddling  of  parents  and  to  learn  self-reliance ;  and  a 
family  dormitory  system,  with  but  few,  twelve  to  twenty, 
in  each  building,  to  escape  nervous  wear  and  distraction, 
to  secure  intimacy  and  acquaintance  with  one  or  more 
matrons  or  teachers  and  to  ensure  the  most  pedagogic 
dietetics,  is  suggested. 

Exercise  comes  after  regimen,  of  w^hich  it  is  a  special 
reform.  Swedish  gymnastics  should  be  abandoned  or  re- 
duced to  a  minimum  of  best  points,  because  it  is  too 
severe  and,  in  forbidding  music,  lays  too  little  stress  upon 
the  rhythm  element.  Out-of-door  walks  and  games 
should  have  precedence  over  all  else.  The  principle 
sometimes  advocated,  that  methods  of  physical  training 
should  apply  to  both  hoys  and  girls  w^ithout  regard  to 
sex,  and  with  all  the  ordinary  appliances  found  in  the 
men 's  gymnasia  introduced,  should  be  reversed  and  every 
possible  adjustment  made  to  sex.  Free  plays  and  games 
should  always  have  precedence  over  indoor  or  uniform 
commando  exercises.  Boating  and  basket-ball  should  be 
allowed,  but  with  the  competition  element  sedulously  re- 
duced, and  with  dancing  of  many  kinds  and  forms  the 
most  prominent  of  indoor  exercises.  The  dance  cadences 
the  soul ;  the  stately  minuet  gives  poise ;  the  figure  dances 
train  the  mind;  and  pantomime  and  dramatic  features 
should  be  introduced  and  even  specialties,  if  there  are 
strong  individual  predispositions.  The  history  of  the 
dance,  W'hich  has  often  been  a  mode  of  worship,  a  school 
of  morals,  and  which  is  the  root  of  the  best  that  is  in 
the  drama,  the  best  of  all  exercises  and  that  could  be 
again  the  heart  of  our  whole  educational  system,  should 
21  311 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

be  exploited,  and  the  dancing  school  and  class  rescued 
from  its  present  degradation.  No  girl  is  educated  who 
can  not  dance,  although  she  need  not  know  the  ballroom 
in  its  modern  f  orm.^ 

Manners,  a  word  too  often  relegated  to  the  past  as 
savoring  of  the  primness  of  the  ancient  dame  school  or 
female  seminary,  are  really  minor  or  sometimes  major 
morals.  They  can  express  everything  in  the  whole  range 
of  the  impulsive  or  emotional  life.  Now  that  w^e  under- 
stand the  primacy  of  movement  over  feeling,  we  can  ap- 
preciate what  a  school  of  bearing  and  repose  in  daily  con- 
verse with  others  means.  I  would  revive  some  of  the 
ancient  casuistry  of  details,  but  less  the  rules  of  the  draw- 
ing-room, call  and  party,  although  these  should  not  be 
neglected,  than  the  deeper  expressions  of  true  ladyhood 
seen  in  an  exquisite,  tender  and  unselfish  regard  for  the 
feelings  of  others.  Women's  ideal  of  compelling  every 
one  whom  they  meet  to  like  them  is  a  noble  one,  and  the 
control  of  every  automatism  is  not  only  a  part  of  good 
breeding,  but  nervous  health. 

Regularity  should  be  another  all-pervading  norm.  In 
the  main,  even  though  he  may  have  "  played  his  sex 
symphony  too  harshly/'  E.  H.  Clark  was  right.  Perio- 
dicity, perhaps  the  deepest  law  of  the  cosmos,  celebrates 
its  highest  triumphs  in  woman's  life.  For  years  every- 
thing must  give  way  to  its  thorough  and  settled  estab- 
lishment. In  the  monthly  Sabbatlis  of  rest,  the  ideal 
school  should  revert  to  the  meaning  of  the  word  leisure. 
The  paradise  of  stated  rest  should  be  revisited,  idleness 
be  actively  cultivated ;  reverie,  in  which  the  soul,  which 
needs  these  seasons  of  withdrawal  for  its  own  develop- 
ment, expatiates  over  the  whole  life  of  the  race,  should 
be  provided  for  and  encouraged  in  every  legitimate  way, 

1  See  p.  88. 

312 


THE  EDUCATION   OF   GIRLS 

for,  in  rest,  the  whole  momentum  of  heredity  is  felt  in 
ways  most  favorable  to  full  and  complete  development. 
Then  woman  should  realize  that  to  he  is  greater  than 
to  do ;  should  step  reverently  aside  from  her  daily  routine 
and  let  Lord  Nature  work.  In  this  time  of  sensitiveness 
and  perturbation,  when  anemia  and  chlorosis  are  so 
peculiarly  immanent  to  her  sex,  remission  of  toil  should 
not  only  be  permitted,  but  required ;  and  yet  the  greatest 
individual  liberty  should  be  allowed  to  adjust  itself  to  the 
vast  diversities  of  individual  constitutional  needs.  (See 
Chapter  VII  on  this  point.)  The  cottage  home,  which 
should  take  the  place  of  the  dormitory,  should  always 
have  special  interest  and  attractions  for  these  seasons. 

There  should  always  be  some  personal  instruction  at 
these  seasons  during  earlier  adolescent  years.  I  have 
glanced  over  nearly  a  score  of  books  and  pamphlets  that 
are  especially  written  for  girls ;  while  all  are  well  meant 
and  far  better  than  the  ordinary  modes  by  which  girls 
acquire  knowledge  of  their  own  nature  if  left  to  them- 
selves, they  are,  like  books  for  boys,  far  too  prolix,  and 
most  are  too  scientific  and  plain  and  direct.  Moreover,  no 
two  girls  need  just  the  same  instruction,  and  to  leave  it 
to  reading  is  too  indirect  and  causes  the  mind  to  dwell 
on  it  for  too  long  periods.  Best  of  all  is  individual  in- 
struction at  the  time,  concise,  practical,  and  never,  es- 
pecially in  the  early  years,  without  a  certain  mystic  and 
religious  tone  which  should  pervade  all  and  make  every- 
thing sacred.  This  should  not  be  given  by  male  phy- 
sicians— and  indeed  most  female  doctors  would  make 
it  too  professional,  and  the  maiden  teacher  must  forever 
lack  reverence  for  it — but  it  should  come  from  one  whose 
soul  and  body  are  full  of  wifehood  and  motherhood  and 
who  is  old  enough  to  know  and  is  not  without  the  neces- 
sary technical  knowledge. 

313 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

Another  principle  should  be  to  broaden  by  retarding ; 
to  keep  the  purely  mental  back  and  by  every  method  to 
bring  the  intuitions  to  the  front;  appeals  to  tact  and 
taste  should  be  incessant;  a  purely  intellectual  man  is 
no  doubt  biologically  a  deformity,  but  a  purely  intel- 
lectual woman  is  far  more  so.  Bookishness  is  probably 
a  bad  sign  in  a  girl;  it  suggests  artificiality,  pedantry, 
the  lugging  of  dead  knowledge.  Mere  learning  is  not 
the  ideal,  and  prodigies  of  scholarship  are  always  morbid. 
The  rule  should  be  to  keep  nothing  that  is  not  to  become 
practical;  to  open  no  brain  tracts  which  are  not  to  be 
highways  for  the  daily  traffic  of  thought  and  conduct ;  not 
to  overburden  the  soul  with  the  impedimenta  of  libraries 
and  records  of  what  is  afar  off  in  time  or  zest,  and  always 
to  follow  truly  the  guidance  of  normal  and  spontaneous 
interests  wisely  interpreted. 

Religion  will  always  hold  as  prominent  a  place  in 
woman's  life  as  politics  does  in  man's,  and  adolescence  is 
still  more  its  seedtime  with  girls  than  with  boys.  Its 
roots  are  the  sentiment  of  awe  and  reverence,  and  it  is 
the  great  agent  in  the  world  for  transforming  life  from 
its  earlier  selfish  to  its  only  really  mature  form  of  altru- 
ism. The  tales  of  the  heroes  of  virtue,  duty,  devotion, 
and  self-sacrifice  from  the  Old  Testament  come  naturally 
first;  then  perhaps  the  prophets  paraphrased  as  in  the 
pedagogic  triumph  of  Kent  and  Saunders's  little  series; 
and  when  adolescence  is  at  its  height  then  the  chief  stress 
of  religious  instruction  should  be  laid  upon  Jesus 's  life 
and  work.  He  should  be  taught  first  humanly,  and  only 
later  when  the  limitations  of  manhood  seem  exhausted 
should  His  Deity  be  adduced  as  a  welcome  surplusage. 
The  supernatural  is  a  reflex  of  the  heart;  each  sustains 
and  neither  can  exist  without  the  other.  If  the  trans- 
cendent  and   supernal  had   no   objective   existence,   we 

314 


THE  EDUCATION   OF   GIRLS 

should  have  to  invent  and  teach  it  or  dwarf  the  life 
of  feeling  and  sentiment.  Whatever  else  religion  is, 
therefore,  it  is  the  supremest  poetry  of  the  soul, 
reflecting  like  nothing  else  all  that  is  deepest,  most 
generic  and  racial  in  it.  Theology  should  be  re- 
duced to  a  minimum,  but  nothing  denied  where  wanted. 
Paul  and  his  works  and  ways  should  be  for  the 
most  part  deferred  until  after  eighteen.  The  juvenile 
as  well  as  the  cyclone  revivalist  should  be  very  care- 
fully excluded;  and  yet  in  every  springtime,  when  na- 
ture is  recreated,  service  and  teaching  should  gently  en- 
courage the  revival  and  even  the  regeneration  of  all  the 
religious  instincts.  The  mission  recruiter  should  be  al- 
lowed to  do  his  work  outside  these  halls,  and  ever^lhing 
in  the  way  of  infection  and  all  that  brings  religion  into 
conflict  with  good  taste  and  good  sense  should  be  ex- 
cluded, while  esthetics  should  supplement,  reenforce,  and 
go  hand  in  hand  w^ith  piety.  Religion  is  in  its  infancy; 
and  woman,  Avho  has  sustained  it  in  the  past,  must  be  the 
chief  agent  in  its  further  and  higher  development.  Ortho- 
doxies and  all  narrowness  should  forever  give  place  to 
cordial  hospitality  toward  every  serious  view,  which 
should  be  met  by  the  method  of  greater  sympathy  rather 
than  by  that  of  criticism. 

Nature  in  her  many  phases  should,  of  course,  make 
up  a  large  part  of  the  entire  curriculum,  but  here 
again  the  methods  of  the  sexes  should  differ  some- 
what after  puberty.  The  poetic  and  mythic  factors 
and  some  glimpses  of  the  history  of  science  should 
be  given  more  prominence;  the  field  naturalist  rather 
than  the  laboratory  man  of  technic  should  be  the 
ideal  especially  at  first;  nature  should  be  taught  as  God's 
first  revelation,  as  an  Old  Testament  related  to  the  Bible 
as  a  primordial  dispensation  to  a  later  and  clearer  and 

315 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

more  special  one.  Reverence  and  love  should  be  the 
motive  powers,  and  no  aspect  should  be  studied  without 
beginning  and  culminating  in  interests  akin  to  devotion. 
Mathematics  should  be  taught  only  in  its  rudiments,  and 
those  with  special  talents  or  tastes  for  it  should  go  to 
agamic  schools.  Chemistry,  too,  although  not  excluded, 
should  have  a  subordinate  place.  The  average  girl  has 
little  love  of  sozzling  and  mussing  with  the  elements,  and 
cooking  involves  problems  in  organic  chemistry  too  com- 
plex to  be  understood  very  profoundly,  but  the  rudiments 
of  household  chemistry  should  be  taught.  Physics,  too, 
should  be  kept  to  elementary  stages.  Meteorology  should 
have  a  larger,  and  geology  and  astronomy  increasingly 
larger  places,  and  are  especially  valuable  because,  and 
largely  in  proportion  as,  they  are  taught  out  of  doors, 
but  the  general  principles  and  the  untechnical  and  practi- 
cal aspects  should  be  kept  in  the  foreground.  With 
botany  more  serious  work  should  be  done.  Plant-lore 
and  the  poetic  aspect,  as  in  astronomy,  should  have  at- 
tention throughout,  while  Latin  nomenclature  and  mi- 
croscopic technic  should  come  late  if  at  all,  and  vulgar 
names  should  have  precedence  over  Latin  terminology. 
Flowers,  gardening,  and  excursions  should  never  be 
wanting.  Economic  and  even  medical  aspects  should  ap- 
pear, and  prominent  and  early  should  come  the  whole 
matter  of  self  cross-fertilization  and  that  by  insects.  The 
moral  value  of  this  subject  will  never  be  fully  understood 
till  we  have  what  might  almost  be  called  a  woman's 
botany,  constructed  on  lines  different  from  any  of  the 
text-books  I  have  glanced  at.  Here  much  knowledge  in- 
teresting in  itself  can  be  early  taught,  which  will  spring 
up  into  a  world  of  serviceable  insights  as  adolescence 
develops  and  the  great  law  of  sex  unfolds. 

Zoology  should  always  be  taught  with  plenty  of  pets, 
316 


THE   EDUCATION   OF   GIRLS 

menagerie  resources,  and  with  aquaria,  aviaries,  apiaries, 
formicaries,  etc.,  as  adjuncts.  It  should  start  in  the 
environment  like  everything  else.  Bird  and  animal  lore, 
books,  and  pictures  should  abound  in  the  early  stages, 
and  the  very  prolific  chapter  of  instincts  should  have 
ample  illustration,  while  the  morphological  nomenclature 
and  details  of  structure  should  be  less  essential.  Woman 
has  domesticated  nearly  all  the  animals,  and  is  so  superior 
to  man  in  insight  into  their  modes  of  life  and  psychoses 
that  many  of  them  are  almost  exemplifications  of  moral 
qualities  to  her  even  more  than  to  man.  The  peacock  is 
an  embodied  expression  of  pride;  the  pig,  of  filth;  the 
fox,  of  cunning ;  the  serpent,  of  subtle  danger ;  the  eagle, 
of  sublimity;  the  goose,  of  stupidity;  and  so  on  through 
all  the  range  of  human  qualities,  as  we  have  seen.  At  bot- 
tom, however,  the  study  of  animal  life  is  coming  to  be 
more  and  more  a  problem  of  heredity,  and  its  problems 
should  have  dominant  position  and  to  them  the  other 
matter  should  grade  up. 

This  shades  over  into  and  prepares  for  the  study  of 
the  primitive  man  and  child  so  closely  related  to  each 
other.  The  myth,  custom,  belief,  domestic  practises  of 
savages,  vegetative  and  animal  traits  in  infancy  and 
childhood,  the  development  of  which  is  a  priceless  boon 
for  the  higher  education  of  women,  open  of  themselves 
a  great  field  of  human  interest  where  she  needs  to  know 
the  great  results,  the  striking  details,  the  salient  illustra- 
tions, the  basal  principles  rather  than  to  be  entangled 
in  the  details  of  anthropometry,  craniometry,  philol- 
ogy, etc. 

All  this  lays  the  basis  for  a  larger  study  of  modern 
man — history,  with  the  biographical  element  very  promi- 
nent throughout,  with  plenty  of  stories  of  heroes  of 
Tirtue,  acts  of  valor^  tales  of  saintly  lives  and  the  personal 

317 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

element  more  prominent,  and  specialization  in  the  study 
of  dynasties,  wars,  authorities,  and  controversies  relegated 
to  a  very  subordinate  place.  Sociology,  undeveloped, 
rudimentary,  and  in  some  places  suspected  as  it  is,  should 
have  in  the  curriculum  of  her  higher  education  a  place 
above  political  economy.  The  stories  of  the  great  re- 
forms, and  accounts  of  the  constitution  of  society,  of  the 
home,  church,  state,  and  school,  and  philanthropies  and 
ideals,  should  come  to  the  fore. 

Art  in  all  its  forms  should  be  opened  at  least  in  a 
propaedeutic  way  and  individual  tastes  amply  and 
judiciously  fed,  but  there  should  be  no  special  training 
in  music  without  some  taste  and  gift,  and  the  aim  should 
be  to  develop  critical  and  discriminative  appreciation  and 
the  good  taste  that  sees  the  vast  superiority  of  all  that  is 
good  and  classic  over  what  is  cheap  and  fustian. 

In  literature,  myth,  poetry,  and  drama  should  perhaps 
lead,  and  the  knowledge  of  the  great  authors  in  the  ver- 
nacular be  fostered.  Greek,  Hebrew,  and  perhaps  Latin 
languages  should  be  entirely  excluded,  not  but  that  they 
are  of  great  value  and  have  their  place,  but  because  a 
smattering  knowledge  is  bought  at  too  high  a  price  of  ig- 
norance of  more  valuable  things.  German,  French,  and 
Italian  should  be  allowed  and  provided  for  by  native 
teachers  and  by  conversational  methods  if  desired,  and 
in  their  proper  season. 

In  the  studies  of  the  soul  of  man,  generally  called  the 
philosophic  branches,  metaphysics  and  epistemology 
should  have  the  smallest,  and  logic  the  next  least  place. 
Psychology  should  be  taught  on  the  genetic  basis  of  ani- 
mals and  children,  and  one  of  its  tap-roots  should  be 
developed  from  the  love  of  infancy  and  youth,  than 
which  nothing  in  all  the  world  is  more  worthy.  If  a 
woman  Descartes  ever  arises,  she  will  put  life  before 

318 


THE  EDUCATION   OF  GIRLS 

theory,  and  her  watchword  will  be  not  cog  Ho,  ergo  sicm,^ 
but  sum,  ergo  cogito}  The  psychology  of  sentiments 
and  feelings  and  intuitions  will  take  precedence  of  that 
of  pure  intellect ;  ethics  will  be  taught  on  the  basis  of  the 
whole  series  of  practical  duties  and  problems,  and  the 
theories  of  the  ultimate  nature  of  right  or  the  constitu- 
tion of  conscience  will  have  small  place. 

Domesticity  will  be  taught  by  example  in  some  ideal 
home  building  by  a  kind  of  laboratory  method.  A 
nursery  with  all  carefully  selected  appliances  and  ad- 
juncts, a  dining-room,  a  kitchen,  bedroom,  closets,  cellars, 
outhouses,  building,  its  material,  the  grounds,  lawn, 
shrubbery,  hothouse,  library,  and  all  the  other  adjuncts 
of  the  hearth  will  be  both  exemplified  and  taught.  A 
general  course  in  pedagogy,  especially  its  history  and 
ideals,  another  in  child  study,  and  finally  a  course  in 
maternity  the  last  year  taught  broadly,  and  not  without 
practical  details  of  nursing,  should  be  comprehensive  and 
culminating.  In  its  largest  sense  maternity  might  be  the 
heart  of  all  the  higher  training  of  young  women. 

Applied  knowledge  will  thus  be  brought  to  a  focus  in 
a  department  of  teaching  as  one  of  the  specialties  of 
motherhood  and  not  as  a  vocation  apart.  The  training 
should  aim  to  develop  power  of  maternity  in  soul  as  well 
as  in  body,  so  that  home  influence  may  extend  on  and  up 
through  the  plastic  years  of  pubescence,  and  future  gen- 
erations shall  not  rebel  against  these  influences  until  they 
have  wrought  their  perfect  work. 

The  methods  throughout  should  be  objective,  with 
copious  illustrations  by  way  of  object-lessons,  apparatus, 
charts,  pictures,  diagrams,  and  lectures,  far  less  book 
work  and  recitation,  only  a  limited  amount  of  room  study, 

1 1  think,  therefore  I  am.  2 1  am,  therefore  I  think, 

319 


YOUTH  :  ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

the  function  of  examination  reduced  to  a  minimum, 
and  everything  as  suggestive  and  germinal  as  possible. 
Hints  that  are  not  followed  up ;  information  not  elab- 
orated into  a  thin  pedagogic  sillabub  or  froth ;  seed  that  is 
sown  on  the  waters  with  no  thought  of  reaping ;  faith  in 
a  God  who  does  not  pay  at  the  end  of  each  week,  month, 
or  year,  but  who  always  pays  abundantly  some  time; 
training  which  does  not  develop  hypertrophied  memory- 
pouches  that  carry,  or  creative  powers  that  discover  and 
produce — these  are  lines  on  which  such  an  institution 
should  develop.  Specialization  has  its  place,  but  it  al- 
ways hurts  a  woman's  soul  more  than  a  man's,  should 
always  come  later,  and  if  there  is  special  capacity  it 
should  be  trained  elsewhere.  Unconscious  education  is 
a  power  of  which  we  have  yet  to  learn  the  full  ranges. 

In  most  groups  in  this  series  of  ideal  departments 
there  should  be  at  least  one  healthful,  wise,  large-souled, 
honorable,  married  and  attractive  man,  and,  if  possible, 
several  of  them.  His  very  presence  in  an  institution  for 
young  women  gives  poise,  polarizes  the  soul,  and  gives 
wholesome  but  long-circuited  tension  at  root  no  doubt 
sexual,  but  all  unconsciously  so.  This  mentor  should 
not  be  more  father  than  brother,  though  he  should  com- 
bine the  best  of  each,  but  should  add  another  element. 
He  need  not  be  a  doctor,  a  clergyman,  or  even  a  great 
scholar,  but  should  be  accessible  for  confidential  con- 
ferences even  though  intimate.  He  should  know  the 
soul  of  the  adolescent  girl  and  how  to  prescribe;  he 
should  be  wise  and  fruitful  in  advice,  but  especially 
should  be  to  all  a  source  of  contagion  and  inspiration 
for  poise  and  courage  even  though  religious  or  medical 
problems  be  involved.  But  even  if  he  lack  all  these 
latter  qualities,  though  he  be  so  poised  that  impulsive 
girls  can  turn  their  hearts  inside  out  in  his  presence 

320 


THE   EDUCATION   OF  GIRLS 

and  perhaps  even  weep  on  his  shoulder,  the  presence  of 
such  a  being,  though  a  complete  realization  of  this  ideal 
could  be  only  remotely  approximated,  would  be  the  center 
of  an  atmosphere  most  wholesomely  tonic. 

In  these  all  too  meager  outlines  I  have  sketched  a 
humanistic  and  liberal  education  and  have  refrained 
from  all  details  and  special  curriculization.  Many  of 
the  above  features  I  believe  would  be  as  helpful  for 
boys  as  for  girls,  but  woman  has  here  an  opportunity  to 
resume  her  exalted  and  supreme  position,  to  be  the  first 
in  this  higher  field,  to  lead  man  and  pay  her  debt  to 
his  educational  institutions,  by  resuming  her  crown. 
The  ideal  institutions,  however,  for  the  two  will  always 
be  radically  and  probably  always  increasingly  divergent. 

As  a  psychologist,  penetrated  with  the  growing  sense 
of  the  predominance  of  the  heart  over  the  mere  in- 
tellect, I  believe  myself  not  alone  in  desiring  to  make 
a  tender  declaration  of  being  more  and  more  pas- 
sionately in  love  with  woman  as  I  conceive  she  came 
from  the  hand  of  God.  I  keenly  envy  my  Catholic 
friends  their  Maryolatry.  Who  ever  asked  if  the  Holy 
Mother,  whom  the  wise  men  adored,  knew  the  astronomy 
of  the  Chaldees  or  had  studied  Egyptian  or  Babylonian, 
or  even  whether  she  knew  how  to  read  or  write  her  own 
tongue,  and  who  has  ever  thought  of  caring?  We  can 
not  conceive  that  she  bemoaned  any  limitations  of  her 
sex,  but  she  has  been  an  object  of  adoration  all  these 
centuries  because  she  glorified  womanhood  by  being 
more  generic,  nearer  the  race,  and  richer  in  love,  pity, 
unselfish  devotion  and  intuition  than  man.  The  glori- 
fied madonna  ideal  shows  us  how  much  more  whole  and 
holy  it  is  to  be  a  woman  than  to  be  artist,  orator,  pro- 
fessor, or  expert,  and  suggests  to  our  own  sex  that  to  be 

321 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

a  man  is  larger  than  to  be  gentleman,  philosopher,  gen- 
eral, president,  or  millionaire. 

But  with  all  this  love  and  hunger  in  my  heart,  I  can 
not  help  sharing  in  the  growing  fear  that  modern 
woman,  at  least  in  more  ways  and  places  than  one,  is 
in  danger  of  declining  from  her  orbit ;  that  she  is  com- 
ing to  lack  just  confidence  and  pride  in  her  sex  as  such, 
and  is  just  now  in  danger  of  lapsing  to  mannish  ways, 
methods,  and  ideals,  until  her  original  divinity  may 
become  obscured.  But  if  our  worship  at  her  shrine  is 
with  a  love  and  adoration  a  little  qualified  and  unsteady, 
we  have  a  fixed  and  abiding  faith  without  which  we 
should  have  no  resource  against  pessimism  for  the  future 
of  our  race,  that  she  will  ere  long  evolve  a  sphere  of 
life  and  even  education  which  fits  her  needs  as  well  as, 
if  not  better  than,  those  of  man  fit  his. 

Meanwhile,  if  the  eternally  womanly  seems  somewhat 
less  divine,  we  can  turn  with  unabated  faith  to  the 
eternally  childlike,  the  best  of  which  in  each  are  so 
closely  related.  The  oracles  of  infancy  and  childhood 
will  never  fail.  Distracted  as  we  are  in  the  maze  of 
new  sciences,  skills,  ideals,  knowledges  that  we  can  not 
fully  coordinate  by  our  logic  or  curriculize  by  our 
pedagogy;  confused  between  the  claims  of  old  and  new 
methods;  needing  desperately,  for  survival  as  a  nation 
and  a  race,  some  clue  to  thrid  the  mazes  of  the  manifold 
modern  cultures,  we  have  now  at  least  one  source  to 
which  we  can  turn — we  have  found  the  only  magnet  in 
all  the  universe  that  points  steadfastly  to  the  undis- 
covered pole  of  human  destiny.  We  know  what  can 
and  will  ultimately  coordinate  in  the  generic,  which  is 
larger  than  the  logical  order,  all  that  is  worth  know- 
ing, teaching,  or  doing  by  the  best  methods,  that  will 
save  us  from  misfits  and  the  waste  ineffable  of  premature 

322 


THE  EDUCATION   OF  GIRLS 

and  belated  knowledge,  and  that  is  in  the  interests  and 
line  of  normal  development  in  the  child  in  our  midst 
that  must  henceforth  ever  lead  us;  which  epitomizes 
in  its  development  all  the  stages,  human  and  prehuman ; 
that  is  the  proper  object  of  all  that  strange  new  love 
of  everything  that  is  naive,  spontaneous,  and  unsophis- 
ticated in  human  nature.  The  heart  and  soul  of  grow- 
ing childhood  is  the  criterion  by  which  we  judge  the 
larger  heart  and  soul  of  mature  womanhood;  and  these 
are  ultimately  the  only  guide  into  the  heart  of  the  new 
education  which  is  to  be,  when  the  school  becomes  what 
Melanchthon  said  it  must  be — a  true  workshop  of  the 
Holy  Ghost — and  what  the  new  psychology,  when  it 
rises  to  the  heights  of  prophecy,  foresees  as  the  true  para- 
dise of  restored  intuitive  human  nature. 


323 


CHAPTER    XII 

MORAL   AND    RELIGIOUS    TRAINING 

Dangers  of  muscular  degeneration  and  overstimulus  of  brain — Difficulties 
in  teaching  morals — Methods  in  Europe — Obedience  to  commands — 
Good  habits  should  be  mechanized — Value  of  scolding — How  to  flog 
aright — Its  dangers — Moral  precepts  and  proverbs — Habituation — 
Training  will  through  intellect  —  Examinations  —  Concentration  — 
Originality — Froebel  and  the  naive — First  ideas  of  God — Conscience 
— Importance  of  Old  and  New  Testaments — Sex  dangers — Love  and 
religion — Conversion. 

From  its  nature  as  well  as  from  its  central  impor- 
tance it  might  be  easily  shown  that  the  will  is  no  less 
dependent  on  the  culture  it  receives  than  is  the  mind.  It 
is  fast  becoming  as  absurd  to  suppose  that  men  can  sur- 
vive in  the  great  practical  strain  to  which  American  life 
subjects  all  who  would  succeed,  if  the  will  is  left  to  take 
its  doubtful  chances  of  training  and  discipline,  as  to 
suppose  that  the  mind  develops  in  neglect.  Our  changed 
conditions  make  this  chance  of  will-culture  more  doubt- 
ful than  formerly.  A  generation  or  two  ago  ^  most 
school-boys  had  either  farm  work,  chores,  errands,  jobs 
self-imposed,  or  required  by  less  tender  parents;  they 
made  things,  either  toys  or  tools,  out  of  school.  Most 
school-girls  did  house-work,  more  or  less  of  which  is, 
like  farm-work,  perhaps  the  most  varied  and  most 
salutary  as  well  as  most  venerable  of  all  schools  for  the 
youthful   body   and   mind.      They  undertook   extensive 

t  See  author's  Boy  IJfe  in  a  Massachusetts  Country  Town  Forty  Years 
Ago.     Pedagogical  Seminary.  June,  1906,  vol.  13,  pp.  192-207. 

324 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  TRAINING 

works  of  embroidery,  bed-quilting,  knitting,  sewing, 
mending,  if  not  cleaning,  and  even  spinning  and  weav- 
ing their  own  or  others'  clothing,  and  cared  for  the 
younger  children.  The  wealthier  devised  or  imposed 
tasks  for  will-culture,  as  the  German  Kaiser  has 
his  children  taught  a  trade  as  part  of  their  education. 
Ten  days  at  the  hoe-handle,  axe,  or  pitchfork,  said  an 
eminent  educator  lately  in  substance,  with  no  new  im- 
pression from  without,  and  one  constant  and  only  duty, 
is  a  schooling  in  perseverance  and  sustained  effort  such 
as  few  boys  now  get  in  any  shape ;  while  city  instead  of 
country  life  brings  so  many  new,  heterogeneous  and 
distracting  impressions  of  motion  rather  than  rest,  and 
so  many  privileges  with  so  few  corresponding  duties, 
that  with  artificial  life  and  bad  air  the  will  is  weakened, 
and  eupeptic  minds  and  stom.achs,  on  which  its  vigor  so 
depends,  are  rare.  Machines  supersede  muscles,  and 
perhaps  our  athleticism  gives  skill  too  great  preponder- 
ance over  strength,  or  favors  intense  rather  than  con- 
stant, long-sustained,  unintermittent  energy.  Perhaps 
too  many  of  our  courses  of  study  are  better  fitted  to 
turn  out  many-sided  but  superficial  paragraphists,  than 
men  who  can  lay  deep  plans,  and  subordinate  many  com- 
plex means  to  one  remote  end.  Meanwhile,  if  there  is 
any  one  thing  of  which  our  industries  and  practical  arts 
are  in  more  crying  need  than  another,  it  is  the  old- 
fashioned  virtue  of  thoroughness,  of  a  kind  and  degree 
which  does  not  address  merely  the  eye,  is  not  limited 
by  the  letter  of  a  contract,  but  which  has  some  regard 
for  its  products  for  their  own  sake,  and  some  sense  for 
the  future.  Whether  in  science,  philosophy,  morals,  or 
business,  the  fields  for  long-ranged  cumulative  efforts 
are  wider,  more  numerous,  and  far  more  needy  than  in 
the  days  when  it  was  the  fashion  for  men  contentedly 

325 


YOUTH ;    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

to  concentrate  themselves  to  one  vocation,  life-work,  or 
mission,  or  when  cathedrals  or  other  yet  vaster  public 
works  were  transmitted,  unfinished  but  ever  advancing, 
from  one  generation  of  men  to  another. 

It  is  because  the  brain  is  developed,  while  the  muscles 
are  allowed  to  grow  flabby  and  atrophied,  that  the  de- 
plored chasm  between  knowing  and  doing  is  so  often 
fatal  to  the  practical  effectiveness  of  mental  and  moral 
culture.  The  great  increase  of  city  and  sedentary  life 
has  been  far  too  sudden  for  the  human  body — which  was 
developed  by  hunting,  war,  agriculture,  and  manifold 
industries  now  given  over  to  steam  and  machinery — 
to  adapt  itself  healthfully  or  naturally  to  its  new  en- 
vironment. Let  any  of  us  take  down  an  anatomical 
chart  of  the  human  muscles,  and  reflect  what  movements 
we  habitually  make  each  day,  and  realize  how  dispro- 
portionately our  activities  are  distributed  compared 
with  the  size  or  importance  of  the  muscles,  and  how 
greatly  modern  specialization  of  work  has  deformed  our 
bodies.  The  muscles  that  move  the  scribbling  pen  are 
an  insignificant  fraction  of  those  in  the  whole  body, 
and  those  that  wag  the  tongue  and  adjust  the  larynx 
are  also  comparatively  few  and  small.  Their  importance 
is,  of  course,  not  underrated,  but  it  is  disastrous  to  con- 
centrate education  upon  them  too  exclusively  or  too  early 
in  life.  The  trouble  is  that  few  realize  what  physical 
vigor  is  in  man  or  woman,  or  how  dangerously  near 
weakness  often  is  to  wickedness,  how  impossible  health- 
ful energy  of  will  is  without  strong  muscles  which  are 
its  organ,  or  how  endurance  and  self-control,  no  less  than 
great  achievement,  depend  on  muscle-habits.  Both  in 
Germany  and  Greece,  a  golden  age  of  letters  was  pre- 
ceded, by  about  a  generation,  by  a  golden  age  of  na- 
tional   gymnastic    enthusiasm   which    constitutes,    espe- 

326 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  TRAINING 

cially  in  the  former  country,  one  of  the  most  unique  and 
suggestive  chapters  in  the  history  of  pedagogy.  Sym- 
metry and  grace,  hardihood  and  courage,  the  power  to 
do  everything  that  the  human  body  can  do  with  and 
without  all  conceivable  apparatus,  instruments,  and  even 
tools,  are  culture  ideals  that  in  Greece,  Rome,  and 
Germany  respectively  have  influenced,  as  they  might 
again  influence,  young  men,  as  intellectual  ideals  never 
can  do  save  in  a  select  few.  We  do  not  want  ' '  will-vir- 
tuosos,'^  who  perform  feats  hard  to  learn,  but  then  easy 
to  do  and  good  for  show;  nor  spurtiness  of  any  sort 
which  develops  an  erethic  habit  of  work,  temper,  and 
circulation,  and  is  favored  by  some  of  our  popular 
sports  but  too  soon  reacts  into  fatigue.  Even  will- 
training  does  not  reach  its  end  till  it  leads  the  young 
up  to  taking  an  intelligent,  serious  and  life-long  in- 
terest in  their  own  physical  culture  and  development. 
This  is  higher  than  interest  in  success  in  school  or  col- 
lege sport;  and,  though  naturally  later  than  these,  is 
one  of  the  earliest  forms  of  will-culture  in  which  it  is 
safe  and  wise  to  attempt  to  interest  the  young  for  its 
own  sake  alone.  In  our  exciting  life  and  trying  climate, 
in  which  the  experiment  of  civilization  has  never  been 
tried  before,  these  thoughts  are  merely  exercises. 

But  this  is,  of  course,  preliminary.  Great  as  is  the 
need,  the  practical  difficulties  in  the  way  are  very  great. 
First,  there  are  not  only  no  good  text-books  in  ethics, 
but  no  good  manual  to  guide  teachers.  Some  give  so 
many  virtues  or  good  habits  to  be  taught  per  term, 
ignoring  the  unity  of  virtue  as  well  as  the  order  in 
which  the  child's  capacities  for  real  virtue  unfold.  Ad- 
vanced text-books  discuss  the  grounds  of  obligation,  the 
nature  of  choice  or  freedom,  or  the  hedonistic  calculus, 
as  if  pleasures  and  pains  could  be  balanced  as  measur- 
22  327 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

able  quantities,  etc.,  so  that  philosophic  morality  is 
clearly  not  for  children  or  teachers.  Secondly,  evolu- 
tion encourages  too  often  the  doubt  whether  virtue  can 
be  taught,  when  it  should  have  the  opposite  effect.  Per- 
versity and  viciousness  of  will  are  too  often  treated  as 
constitutional  disease;  and  insubordination  or  obstinacy, 
especially  in  school,  are  secretly  admired  as  strength, 
instead  of  being  vigorously  treated  as  crampy  disorders 
of  will,  and  the  child  is  coddled  into  flaccidity.  Because 
the  lowest  develops  first,  there  is  danger  that  it  will 
interfere  with  the  development  of  the  higher,  and  thus, 
if  left  to  his  own,  the  child  may  come  to  have  no  will. 
The  third  and  greatest  difficulty  is,  that  with  the  best 
effort  to  do  so,  so  few  teachers  can  separate  morality 
from  religious  creed.  So  vital  is  the  religious  sentiment 
here  that  it  is  hard  to  divorce  the  end  of  education  from 
the  end  of  life,  proximate  from  ultimate  grounds  of 
obligation,  or  finite  from  infinite  duties.  Those  whose 
training  has  been  more  religious  than  ethical  can  hardly 
teach  morality  per  se  satisfactorily  to  the  noli  me 
tangere  ^  spirit  of  denominational  freedom  so  wisely  jeal- 
ous of  conflicting  standards  and  sanctions  for  the  young. 

How  then  can  we  ever  hope  to  secure  proper  training 
for  the  wilH 

More  than  a  generation  ago  Germany  developed  the 
following  method :  Children  of  Lutheran,  Catholic  and 
Jewish  parentage,  which  include  most  German  children, 
were  allowed  one  afternoon  a  week  for  several  years, 
and  two  afternoons  a  week  for  a  few  months  preceding 
confirmation,  to  spend  half  of  a  school  day  with  in- 
structors of  these  respective  professions,  who  were  nom- 
inated by  the  church,  but  examined  by  the  state  as  to 

1  Touch  me  not. 

328 


MORAL  AND   RELIGIOUS  TRAINING 

their  competence.  These  teachers  are  as  professional, 
therefore,  as  those  in  the  regular  class  work.  Each  re- 
ligion is  allowed  to  determine  its  own  course  of  re- 
ligious instruction,  subject  only  to  the  approval  of  the 
cultus  minister  or  the  local  authorities.  In  this  way  a 
rupture  between  the  religious  sentiments  and  teaching 
of  successive  generations  is  avoided  and  it  is  sought  to 
bring  religious  training  to  bear  upon  morals.  These 
classes  learn  Scripture,  hymns,  church  service, — the  Cath- 
olics in  Latin  and  the  Jewish  in  Hebrew, — the  history  of 
their  church  and  people,  and  sometimes  a  little  sys- 
tematic theology.  In  some  of  these  schools  there  are 
prizes  and  diplomas,  and  the  spirit  of  competition  is 
appealed  to.  A  criticism  sometimes  made  against  them, 
especially  against  the  Lutheran  religious  pedagogy,  is 
that  it  is  too  intellectual.  It  is,  of  course,  far  more 
systematic  and  effective  from  this  point  of  view  than 
the  American  Sunday  School,  so  that  whatever  may  be 
said  of  its  edifying  effects,  the  German  child  knows 
these  topics  far  better  than  the  American.  This  system, 
with  modifications,  has  been  adopted  in  some  places  in 
France,  England  and  in  America,  more  often  in  private 
than  in  public  schools,  however. 

The  other  system  originated  in  France  some  years 
after  the  Franco-Prussian  War  when  the  clerical  in- 
fluence in  French  education  gave  way  to  the  lay  and 
secular  spirit.  In  these  classes,  for  which  also  stated 
times  are  set  apart  and  which  are  continued  through 
all  the  required  grades  under  the  name  of  moral  and 
civic  instruction,  the  religious  element  is  entirely  ab- 
sent, except  that  there  are  a  few  hymns,  Bible  passages 
and  stories  which  all  agree  upon  as  valuable.  Most  of  the 
course  is  made  up  of  carefully  selected  maxims  and 
especially  stories  of  virtue,  records  of  heroic  achieve- 

329 


YOUTH  :  ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

ments  in  French  history  and  even  in  literature  and  the 
drama.  Everything,  however,  has  a  distinct  moral  les- 
son, although  that  lesson  is  not  made  offensively 
prominent.  We  have  here  nearly  a  score  of  these  text- 
books, large  and  small.  It  would  seem  as  though  the 
resources  of  the  French  records  and  literature  had  been 
ransacked,  and  indeed  many  deeds  of  heroism  are  culled 
from  the  daily  press.  The  matter  is  often  arranged 
under  headings  such  as  cleanliness,  acts  of  kindness, 
courage,  truthfulness  versus  lying,  respect  for  age,  good 
manners,  etc.  Each  virtue  is  thus  taught  in  a  way 
appropriate  to  each  stage  of  childhood,  and  quite  often 
bands  of  mercy,  rescue  leagues  and  other  societies  are 
the  outgrowth  of  this  instruction.  It  is,  of  course,  ex- 
posed to  much  criticism  from  the  clergy  on  the  cogent 
ground  that  morality  needs  the  support  of  religion, 
at  the  very  least,  in  childhood.  This  system  has  had 
much  influence  in  England  where  several  similar  courses 
have  been  evolved,  and  in  this  country  we  have  at 
least  one  very  praiseworthy  effort  in  this  direction,  ad- 
dressed mainly,  however,  to  older  children. 

Besides  this,  two  ways  suggest  themselves.  First, 
we  may  try  to  assume,  or  tediously  enucleate  a  consensus 
of  religious  truth  as  a  basis  of  will  training,  e.  g.,  God 
and  immortality,  and,  ignoring  the  minority  who  doubt 
these,  vote  them  into  the  public  school.  Pedagogy  need 
have  nothing  whatever  to  say  respecting  the  absolute 
truth  or  falsity  of  these  ideas,  but  there  is  little  doubt 
that  they  have  an  influence  on  the  will,  at  a  certain  stage 
of  average  development,  greater  and  more  essential  than 
any  other ;  so  great  that  even  were  their  vitality  to  decay 
like  the  faith  in  the  Greek  or  German  mythology,  we 
should  still  have  to  teach  God  and  a  future  life  as  the 
most  imperative  of  all  hypotheses  in  a  field  where,  as 

330 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  TRAINING 

in  morals,  nothing  is  so  practical  as  a  good  theory ;  and 
we  should  have  to  fall  to  teaching  the  Bible  as  a  moral 
classic,  and  cultivate  a  critical  sympathy  for  its  view 
of  life.  But  this  way  ignores  revelation  and  super- 
natural claims,  while  some  have  other  objections  to 
emancipating  or  ''  rescuing  "  the  Bible  from  theology 
just  yet.  Indeed,  the  problem  how  to  teach  anything 
that  the  mind  could  not  have  found  out  for  itself,  but 
that  had  to  be  revealed,  has  not  been  solved  by  modern 
pedagogy,  which,  since  Pestalozzi,  has  been  more  and 
more  devoted  to  natural  and  developing  methods.  The 
latter  teaches  that  there  must  not  be  too  much  seed 
sown,  too  much  or  too  high  precept,  or  too  much  itera- 
tion, and  that,  in  Jean  Paul's  phrase,  the  hammer  must 
not  rest  on  bell,  but  only  tap  and  rebound,  to  bring 
out  a  clear  tone.  Again,  a  consensus  of  this  content 
would  either  have  to  be  carefully  defined  and  would 
be  too  generic  and  abstract  for  school  uses,  or  else 
differences  of  interpretation,  which  so  pervade  and 
are  modified  by  character,  culture,  temperament,  and 
feeling,  would  make  the  consensus  itself  nugatory.  Re- 
ligious training  must  be  specific  at  first,  and,  omitting 
qualifications,  the  more  explicit  the  denominational  faith 
the  earlier  may  religious  motives  affect  the  will. 

This  is  the  way  of  our  hopes,  to  the  closer  considera- 
tion of  which  we  intend  to  return  in  the  future,  though 
it  must  be  expected  that  the  happiest  consensus  will  be 
long  quarantined  from  most  schools.  Meanwhile  a  sec- 
ond way,  however  unpromising,  is  still  open.  Noble 
types  of  character  may  rest  on  only  the  native  instincts 
of  the  soul  or  even  on  broadly  interpreted  utilitarian 
considerations.  But  if  morality  without  religion  were 
only  a  bloodless  corpse  or  a  plank  in  a  shipwreck,  there 
is  now  need  enough  for  teachers  to  study  its  form,  drift, 

331 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

and  uses  by  itself  alone.    This,  at  least,  is  our  purpose  in 
considering  the  will,  and  this  only. 

The  will,  purpose,  and  even  mood  of  small  children 
when  alone,  are  fickle,  fluctuating,  contradictory.  Our 
very  presence  imposes  one  general  law  on  them,  viz.,  that 
of  keeping  our  good  will  and  avoiding  our  displeasure. 
As  the  plant  grows  towards  the  light,  so  they  unfold  in 
the  direction  of  our  wishes,  felt  as  by  divination.  They 
respect  all  you  smile  at,  even  bufl'oonery;  look  up  in 
their  play  to  call  your  notice,  to  study  the  lines  of  your 
sympathy,  as  if  their  chief  vocation  was  to  learn  your 
desires.  Their  early  lies  are  often  saying  what  they 
think  will  please  us,  knowing  no  higher  touchstones  of 
truth.  If  we  are  careful  to  be  wisely  and  without  excess 
happy  and  affectionate  when  they  are  good,  and  sad- 
dened and  slightly  cooled  in  manifestations  of  love  if 
they  do  wrong,  the  power  of  association  in  the  normal, 
eupeptic  child  will  early  choose  right  as  surely  as  pleas- 
ure increases  vitality.  If  our  love  is  deep,  obedience 
is  an  instinct  if  not  a  religion.  The  child  learns  that 
while  it  can  not  excite  our  fear,  resentment  or  admira- 
tion, etc.,  it  can  act  on  our  love,  and  this  should  be 
the  first  sense  of  its  own  efficiency.  Thus,  too,  it  first 
learns  that  the  way  of  passion  and  impulse  is  not  the 
only  rule  of  life,  and  that  something  is  gained  by  re- 
sisting them.  It  imitates  our  acts  long  before  it  can 
understand  our  words.  As  if  it  felt  its  insignificance, 
and  dreaded  to  be  arrested  in  some  lower  phase  of  its 
development,  its  instinct  for  obedience  becomes  almost 
a  passion.  As  the  vine  must  twine  or  grovel,  so  the 
child  comes  unconsciously  to  worship  idols,  and  imi- 
tates bad  patterns  and  examples  in  the  absence  of  worthy 
ones.  He  obeys  as  with  a  deep  sense  of  being  our 
chattel,  and,  at  bottom,  admires  those  who  coerce  him, 

332 


MORAL   AND   RELIGIOUS   TRAINING 

if  the  means  be  wisely  chosen.  The  authority  must,  of 
course,  be  ascendancy  over  heart  and  mind.  The  more 
absolute  such  authority  the  more  the  will  is  saved  from 
caprice  and  feels  the  power  of  steadiness.  Such  author- 
ity excites  the  unique,  unfathomable  sense  of  reverence, 
which  measures  the  capacity  for  will-culture,  and  is  the 
strongest  and  soundest  of  all  moral  motives.  It  is  also 
the  most  comprehensive,  for  it  is  first  felt  only  towards 
persons,  and  personality  is  a  bond,  enabling  any  num- 
ber of  complex  elements  to  act  or  be  treated  as  a 
whole,  as  everything  does  and  is  in  the  child's  soul, 
instead  of  in  isolation  and  detail.  In  the  feeling  of 
respect  culminating  in  w^orship  almost  all  educational 
motives  are  involved,  but  especially  those  which  alone 
can  bring  the  will  to  maturity;  and  happy  the  child 
who  is  bound  by  the  mysterious  and  constraining  sym- 
pathy of  dependence,  by  w^hich,  if  unblighted  by 
cynicism,  a  worthy  mentor  directs  and  lifts  the  will. 
This  unconscious  reflection  of  our  character  and  wishes 
is  the  diviner  side  of  childhood,  by  which  it  is  quick 
and  responsive  to  everything  in  its  moral  environment. 
The  child  may  not  be  able  to  tell  w^hether  its  teacher 
often  smiles,  dresses  in  this  way  or  that,  speaks  loud  or 
low,  has  many  rules  or  not,  though  every  element 
of  her  personality  affects  him  profoundly.  His  acts  of 
will  have  not  been  choices,  but  a  mass  of  psychic  causes 
far  greater  than  consciousness  can  estimate  have  laid 
a  basis  of  character,  than  w^hich  heredity  alone  is 
deeper,  before  the  child  knows  he  has  a  will.  These 
influences  are  not  transient  but  life-long,  for  if  the 
conscious  and  intentional  may  anyw^here  be  said  to  be 
only  a  superficial  wave  over  the  depths  of  the  uncon- 
scious, it  is  in  the  sphere  of  will-culture. 

But  command  and  obedience  must  also  be  specific 
333 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

to  supplant  nature.  Here  begins  the  difficulty.  A 
young  child  can  know  no  general  commands.  *'  Sit  in 
your  chair,"  means  sit  a  moment,  as  a  sort  of  trick, 
with  no  prohibition  to  stand  the  next  instant.  Any  just- 
forbidden  act  may  be  done  in  the  next  room.  All  is 
here  and  now,  and  patient  reiteration,  till  habit  is 
formed,  and  no  havoc-making  rules  which  it  cannot 
understand  or  remember,  is  our  cue.  Obedience  can, 
however,  be  instinct  even  here,  and  is  its  chief  virtue, 
and  there  is  no  more  fear  of  weakening  the  will  by  it 
than  in  the  case  of  soldiers.  As  the  child  grows  older, 
however,  and  as  the  acts  commanded  are  repugnant, 
or  unusual,  there  should  be  increasing  care,  lest  author- 
ity be  compromised,  sympathy  ruptured,  or  lest  mutual 
timidity  and  indecision,  if  not  mutual  insincerity  and 
dissimulation,  as  well  as  parodied  disobedience,  etc.,  to 
test  us,  result.  We  should,  of  course,  watch  for  favor- 
able moods,  assume  no  unwonted  or  preternatural 
dignity  or  owlish  air  of  wisdom,  and  command  in  a  low 
voice  which  does  not  too  rudely  break  in  upon  the 
child's  train  of  impressions.  The  acts  we  command  or 
forbid  should  be  very  few  at  first,  but  inexorable.  We 
should  be  careful  not  to  forbid  where  we  cannot  fol- 
low an  untrusty  child,  or  what  we  can  not  prevent. 
Our  own  will  should  be  a  rock  and  not  a  wave.  Our 
requirements  should  be  uniform,  with  no  whim,  mood, 
or  periodicity  of  any  sort  about  them.  If  we  alternate 
from  caresses  to  severity,  are  fickle  and  capricious  in- 
stead of  commanding  by  a  fixed  and  settled  plan,  if 
we  only  now  and  then  take  the  child  in  hand,  so  he 
does  not  know  precisely  what  to  expect,  we  really  re- 
quire the  child  to  change  its  nature  with  every  change 
in  us,  and  well  for  the  child  who  can  defy  such  a 
changeable    authority,    which    not    only    unsettles    but 

334 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  TRAINING 

breaks  up  character  anew  when  it  is  just  at  the  beginning 
of  the  formative  period.  Neglect  is  better  than  this,  and 
fear  of  inconsistency  of  authority  makes  the  best  parents 
often  jealous  of  arbitrariness  in  teachers.  Only  thus  can 
we  develop  general  habits  of  will  and  bring  the  child  to 
know  general  maxims  of  conduct  inductively,  and  only 
thus  by  judicious  boldness  and  hardihood  in  command 
can  we  bring  the  child  to  feel  the  conscious  strength  that 
comes  only  from  doing  unpleasant  things.  Even  if  in- 
stant obedience  be  only  external  at  first,  it  will  work 
inward,  for  moods  are  controlled  by  work,  and  it  is 
only  will  which  enlarges  the  bounds  of  personality. 

Yet  we  must  not  forget  that  even  morality  is  rela- 
tive, and  is  one  thing  for  adults  and  often  quite  an- 
other for  children.  The  child  knows  nothing  of  absolute 
truth,  justice,  or  virtues.  The  various  stimuli  of  dis- 
cipline are  to  enforce  the  higher  though  weaker  in- 
sights which  the  child  has  already  unfolded,  rather  than 
to  engraft  entirely  unintuited  good.  The  command  must 
find  some  ally,  feeble  though  it  be,  in  the  child's  own 
soul.  We  should  strive  to  fill  each  moment  with  as  little 
sacrifice  or  subordination,  as  mere  means  or  conditions 
to  the  future,  as  possible,  for  fear  of  afi^ectation  and 
insincerity.  But  yet  the  hardier  and  sounder  the  nature, 
the  more  we  may  address  training  to  barely  nascent  in- 
tuitions, with  a  less  ingredient  of  immediate  satisfaction, 
and  the  deeper  the  higher  element  of  interest  will  be 
grounded  in  the  end.  The  child  must  find  as  he  ad- 
vances towards  maturity,  that  every  new  insight  or 
realization  of  his  own  reveals  the  fact  that  you  have 
been  there  before  with  commands,  cultivating  sentiments 
and  habits,  and  not  that  he  was  led  to  mistake  your 
convenience  or  hobby  for  duty,  or  failed  to  temper  the 
will  by  temporizing  with  it.     The  young  are  apt  to  be 

335 


YOUTH  :  ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

most  sincere  at  an  age  when  they  are  also  most  mis- 
taken, but  if  sincerity  be  kept  at  its  deepest  and  best, 
error  will  be  least  harmful  and  easiest  overcome.  If 
authority  supplement  rather  than  supersede  good  mo- 
tives, the  child  will  so  love  authority  as  to  overcome 
your  reluctance  to  apply  it  directly,  and  as  a  final 
result  will  choose  the  state  and  act  you  have  pre-formed 
in  its  slowly-widening  margin  of  freedom,  and  will  be 
all  the  less  liable  to  undue  subservience  to  priest  or 
boss,  or  fashion  or  tradition  later,  as  obedience  gives 
place  to  normal,  manly  independence. 

In  these  and  many  other  ways  everything  in  conduct 
should  be  mechanized  as  early  and  completely  as  pos- 
sible. The  child's  notion  of  what  is  right  is  what  is 
habitual,  and  the  simple,  to  which  all  else  is  reduced 
in  thought,  is  identified  with  the  familiar.  It  is  this 
primitive  stratum  of  habits  which  principally  determines 
our  deepest  beliefs — which  all  must  have  over  and  above 
knowledge — to  which  men  revert  in  mature  years  from 
youthful  vagaries.  If  good  acts  are  a  diet  and  not 
a  medicine,  are  repeated  over  and  over  again,  as  every 
new  beat  of  the  loom  pounds  in  one  new  thread,  and 
a  sense  of  justice  and  right  is  wrought  into  the  very 
nerve-cells  and  fibers;  if  this  ground  texture  of  the 
soul,  this  ^'  memory  and  habit-plexus,"  this  sphere  of 
thoughts  we  oftenest  think  and  acts  we  oftenest  do, 
is  early,  rightly  and  indiscerptibly  wrought,  not  only 
does  it  become  a  web  of  destiny  for  us,  so  all-determin- 
ing is  it,  but  we  have  something  perdurable  to  fall  back 
on  if  moral  shock  or  crisis  or  change  or  calamity  shall 
have  rudely  broken  up  the  whole  structure  of  later 
associations.  Not  only  the  more  we  mechanize  thus, 
the  more  force  of  soul  is  freed  for  higher  work,  but 
we  are  insured  against  emergencies  in  which  the  choice 

336 


MORAL   AND   RELIGIOUS  TRAINING 

and  deed  is  likely  to  follow  the  nearest  motive,  or  that 
which  acts  quickest,  rather  than  to  pause  and  be  in- 
fluenced by  higher  and  perhaps  intrinsically  stronger 
motives.  Reflection  always  brings  in  a  new  set  of  later- 
acquired  motives  and  considerations,  and  if  these  are 
better  than  habit-mechanism,  then  pause  is  good ;  if  not, 
he  who  deliberates  is  lost.  Our  purposive  volitions  are 
very  few  compared  with  the  long  series  of  desires,  acts 
and  reactions,  often  contradictory,  many  of  which  were 
never  conscious,  and  many  once  willed  but  now  lapsed 
to  reflexes,  the  traces  of  which  crowding  the  unknown 
margins  of  the  soul,  constitute  the  organ  of  the  con- 
scious will. 

It  is  only  so  far  as  this  primitive  will  is  wrong  by 
nature  or  training,  that  drastic  reconstructions  of  any 
sort  are  needed.  Only  those  who  mistake  weakness  for 
innocence,  or  simplicity  for  candor,  or  forget  that 
childish  faults  are  no  less  serious  because  universal, 
deny  the,  at  least,  occasional  depravity  of  all  children, 
or  fail  to  see  that  fear  and  pain  are  among  the  indis- 
pensables  of  education,  while  a  parent,  teacher,  or  even 
a  God,  all  love,  weakens  and  relaxes  the  will.  Children 
do  not  cry  for  the  alphabet;  the  multiplication  table 
is  more  like  medicine  than  confectionery,  and  it  is  only 
affected  thoroughness  that  omits  all  that  is  hard.  * '  The 
fruits  of  learning  may  be  sweet,  but  its  roots  are  always 
bitter,"  and  it  is  this  alone  that  makes  it  possible  to 
strengthen  the  will  while  instructing  the  mind.  The 
well-schooled  will  comes,  like  Herder,  to  scorn  the  luxury 
of  knowing  without  the  labor  of  learning.  We  must 
anticipate  the  future  penalties  of  sloth  as  well  as  of 
badness.  The  will  especially  is  a  trust  we  are  to  ad- 
minister for  the  child,  not  as  he  may  now  wish,  but  as 
he  will  wish  when  more  mature.     We  must  now  compel 

337 


YOUTH  :  ITS  EDUCATON,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

what  he  will  later  wish  to  compel  himself  to  do.  To 
find  his  habits  already  formed  to  the  same  law  that 
his  mature  will  and  the  world  later  enjoin,  cements  the 
strongest  of  all  bonds  between  mentor  and  child.  Noth- 
ing, however,  must  be  so  individual  as  punishment.  For 
some,  a  threat  at  rare  intervals  is  enough;  while  for 
others,  however  ominous  threats  may  be,  they  become 
at  once  '*  like  scarecrows,  on  which  the  foulest  birds 
soonest  learn  to  perch."  To  scold  w^ell  and  wisely  is 
an  art  by  itself.  For  some  children,  pardon  is  the  worst 
punishment ;  for  others,  ignoring  or  neglect ;  for  others, 
isolation  from  friends,  suspension  from  duties;  for 
others,  seclusion — which  last,  however,  is  for  certain  ages 
beset  with  extreme  danger — and  for  still  others,  shame 
from  being  made  conspicuous.  Mr.  Spencer's  "  natural 
penalties  "  can  be  applied  to  but  few  kinds  of  wrong, 
and  those  not  the  worst.  Basedow  tied  boys  who  fell 
into  temptation  to  a  strong  pillar  to  brace  them  up; 
if  stupid  and  careless,  put  on  a  fool's  cap  and  bells; 
if  they  were  proud,  they  were  suspended  near  the  ceil- 
ing in  a  basket,  as  Aristophanes  represented  Socrates. 
Two  boys  who  quarreled,  were  made  to  look  into  each 
other's  eyes  before  the  whole  school  till  their  angry 
expressions  gave  way  before  the  general  sense  of  the 
ridiculous.  This  is  more  ingenious  than  wise.  The  ob- 
ject of  discipline  is  to  avoid  punishment,  but  even 
flogging  should  never  be  forbidden.  It  may  be  reserved, 
like  a  sword  in  its  scabbard,  but  should  not  get  so  rusted 
in  that  it  can  not  be  drawn  on  occasion.  The  law  might 
even  limit  the  size  and  length  of  the  rod,  and  place 
of  application,  as  in  Germany,  but  it  should  be  of  no  less 
liberal  dimensions  here  than  there.  Punishment  should, 
of  course,  be  minatory  and  reformatory,  and  not  vin- 
dictive, and  we  should  not  forget  that  certainty  is  more 

338 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  TRAINING 

effective  than  severity,  nor  that  it  is  apt  to  make  mo- 
tives sensuous,  and  delay  the  psychic  restraint  which 
should  early  preponderate  over  the  physical.  But  will- 
culture  for  boys  is  rarely  as  thorough  as  it  should  be 
without  more  or  less  flogging.  I  would  not,  of  course, 
urge  the  extremes  of  the  past.  The  Spartan  beating 
as  a  gymnastic  drill  to  toughen,  the  severity  which  pre- 
vailed in  Germany  for  a  long  time  after  its  Thirty 
Years'  War,^  the  former  fashion  in  so  many  English 
schools  of  walking  up  not  infrequently  to  take  a  flog- 
ging as  a  plucky  thing  to  do,  and  with  no  notion  of 
disgrace  attaching  to  it,  shows  at  least  an  admirable 
strength  of  will.  Severe  constraint  gives  poise,  inward- 
ness, self-control,  inhibition,  and  not-willingness,  if  not 
willingness,  while  the  now  too  common  habit  of  coquet- 
ting for  the  child's  favor,  and  tickling  its  ego  with 
praises  and  prizes,  and  pedagogic  pettifogging  for  its 
good- will,  and  sentimental  fear  of  a  judicious  slap  to 
rouse  a  spoiled  child  with  no  will  to  break,  to  make  it 
keep  step  with  the  rest  in  conduct,  instead  of  delaying 
a  whole  school-room  to  apply  a  subtle  psychology  of 
motives  on  it,  is  bad.  This  reminds  one  of  the  Jain 
who  sweeps  the  ground  before  him  lest  he  unconsciously 
tread  on  a  worm.  Possibly  it  may  be  well,  as  Schleier- 
macher  suggests,  not  to  repress  some  one  nascent  bad 

1  Those  interested  in  school  statistics  may  value  the  record  kept  by  a 
Swabian  schoolmaster  named  Hauberle,  extending  over  fifty-one  years 
and  seven  months'  experience  as  a  teacher,  as  follows:  911,527  blows 
with  a  cane;  124,010  with  a  rod;  20,989  with  a  ruler;  136,715  with  the 
hand;  10,295  over  the  mouth;  7,905  boxes  on  the  ear;  1,115,800  snaps 
on  the  head;  22,763  nota  benes  with  Bible,  catechism,  hymn-book,  and 
grammar;  777  times  boys  had  to  kneel  on  peas;  613  times  on  triangular 
blocks  of  wood;  5,001  had  to  carry  a  timber  mare;  and,  1,701  hold  the 
rod  high;  the  last  two  being  punishments  of  his  own  invention.  Of  the 
blows  with  the  cane  800,000  were  for  Latin  vowels,  and  76,000  of  those 
with  the  rod  for  Bible  verses  and  hymns.  He  used  a  scolding  vocabulary 
of  over  3,000  terms,  of  which  one-third  were  of  his  own  invention. 

339 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

act  in  some  natures,  but  let  it  and  the  punishment  ensue 
for  the  sake  of  Dr.  Spankster's  tonic.  Dermal  pain 
is  not  the  worst  thing  in  the  world,  and  by  a  judicious 
knowledge  of  how  it  feels  at  both  ends  of  the  rod, 
by  flogging  and  being  flogged,  far  deeper  pains  may 
be  forefended.  Insulting  defiance,  deliberative  disobedi- 
ence, ostentatious  carelessness  and  bravado,  are  diseases 
of  the  will,  and,  in  very  rare  cases  of  Promethean 
obstinacy,  the  severe  process  of  breaking  the  will  is 
needful,  just  as  in  surgery  it  is  occasionally  needful  to 
rebreak  a  limb  wrongly  set,  or  deformed,  to  set  it  over 
better.  It  is  a  cruel  process,  but  a  crampy  will  in 
childhood  means  moral  traumatism  of  some  sort  in  the 
adult.  Few  parents  have  the  nerve  to  do  this,  or  the 
insight  to  see  just  when  it  is  needed.  It  is,  as  some  one 
has  said,  like  knocking  a  man  down  to  save  him  from 
stepping  off  a  precipice.  Even  the  worst  punishments 
are  but  very  faint  types  of  what  nature  has  in  store 
in  later  life  for  some  forms  of  perversity  of  will,  and 
are  better  than  sarcasm,  ridicule,  or  tasks,  as  penalties. 
The  strength  of  obstinacy  is  admirable,  and  every  one 
ought  to  have  his  own  will ;  but  a  false  direction,  though 
almost  always  the  result  of  faulty  previous  training  when 
the  soul  was  more  fluid  and  mobile,  is  all  the  more 
fatal.  While  so  few  intelligent  parents  are  able  to  re- 
frain from  the  self-indulgence  of  too  much  rewarding 
or  giving,  even  though  it  injures  the  child,  it  is  perhaps 
too  much  to  expect  the  hardihood  which  can  be  justly  cold 
to  the  caresses  of  a  child  who  seeks,  by  displaying  all 
its  stock  of  goodness  and  arts  of  endearment,  to  buy 
back  good-will  after  punishment  has  been  deserved.  If 
we  wait  too  long,  and  punish  in  cold  blood,  a  young  child 
may  hate  us ;  while,  if  we  punish  on  the  instant,  and  with 
passion,   a  little  of  which  is   always  salutary,  on  the 

340 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS   TRAINING 

principle,  oJine  Affekt  kein  Effekt,^  an  older  child  may- 
fail  of  the  natural  reactions  of  conscience,  which  should 
always  be  secured.  The  maxim,  sximmum  jus  summa  in- 
juria,- we  are  often  told,  is  peculiarly  true  in  school, 
and  so  it  is ;  but  to  forego  all  punishment  is  no  less  in- 
justice to  the  average  child,  for  it  is  to  abandon  one 
of  the  most  effective  means  of  w^ill-culture.  We  never 
punish  but  a  part,  as  it  were,  of  the  child's  nature; 
he  has  lied,  but  is  not  therefore  a  liar,  and  we  deal  only 
with  the  specific  act,  and  must  love  all  the  rest  of  him. 
And  yet,  after  all,  indiscriminate  flogging  is  so  bad, 
and  the  average  teacher  is  so  inadequate  to  that  hardest 
and  most  tactful  of  all  his  varied  duties,  viz.,  selecting 
the  right  outcrop  of  the  right  fault  of  the  right  child 
at  the  right  time  and  place,  mood,  etc.,  for  best  effect, 
that  the  bold  statement  of  such  principles  as  above  is 
perhaps  not  entirely  without  practical  danger,  especially 
in  two  cases  which  Madame  Necker  and  Sigismund  have 
pointed  out,  and  in  several  cases  of  which  the  present 
w^riter  has  notes.  First,  an  habitually  good  child  some- 
times has  a  saturnalia  of  defiance  and  disobedience;  a 
series  of  insubordinate  acts  are  suddenly  committed 
which  really  mark  the  first  sudden  epochful  and  be- 
lated birth  of  the  instinct  of  independence  and  self- 
regulation,  on  which  his  future  manliness  will  depend. 
He  is  quite  irresponsible,  the  acts  are  never  repeated,  and 
very  lenient  treatment  causes  him,  after  the  conflict  of  tu- 
multuous feelings  has  expanded  his  soul,  to  react  health- 
fully into  habitual  docility  again,  if  some  small  field 
for  independent  action  be  at  once  opened  him.  The 
other  case  is  that  of  ennui,  of  which  children  suffer 
such  nameless  qualms.     When   I   should  open  half   a 

1  Without  passion,  no  effect. 

2  The  rigor  of  the  law  may  be  the  greatest  wrong. 

341 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

dozen  books,  start  for  a  walk,  and  then  turn  back,  wan- 
der about  in  mind  or  body,  seeking  but  not  finding 
content  in  anything,  a  child  in  my  mood  will  wish  for 
a  toy,  an  amusement,  food,  a  rare  indulgence,  only  to 
neglect  or  even  reject  it  petulantly  when  granted. 
These  flitting  "will-spectres  "  are  physical,  are  a  mild 
form  of  the  many  fatal  dangers  of  fatigue ;  and  punish- 
ment is  the  worst  of  treatment.  Rest  or  diversion  is 
the  only  cure,  and  the  teacher's  mind  must  be  fruitful 
of  purposes  to  that  end.  Perhaps  a  third  case  for  pal- 
liative treatment  is,  those  lies  which  attend  the  first 
sense  of  badness.  The  desire  to  conceal  it  occasionally 
accompanies  the  nascent  efi'ort  to  reform  and  make  the 
lie  true.  These  cases  are  probably  rare,  while  the  temp- 
tation to  lie  is  far  greater  for  one  who  does  ill  than 
for  one  who  does  well,  for  fear  is  the  chief  motive,  and 
a  successful  lie  which  concealed  would  weaken  the  de- 
sire to  cure  a  fault. 

We  have  thus  far  spoken  of  obedience,  and  come  now 
to  the  later  necessity  of  self-guidance,  which,  if  obedi- 
ence has  wrought  its  perfect  work,  will  be  natural  and 
inevitable.  It  is  very  hard  to  combine  reason  and 
coercion,  yet  it  is  needful  that  children  think  them- 
selves free  long  before  we  cease  to  determine  them.  As 
we  slowly  cease  to  prescribe  and  begin  to  inspire,  a  very 
few  well-chosen  mottoes,  proverbs,  maxims,  should  be 
taught  very  simply,  so  that  they  will  sink  deep.  Educa- 
tion has  been  defined  as  working  against  the  chance  influ- 
ences of  life,  and  it  is  certain  that  without  some  precepts 
and  rules  the  will  will  not  exert  itself.  If  reasons  are 
given,  and  energy  is  much  absorbed  in  understanding,  the 
child  will  assent  but  will  not  do.  If  the  mind  is  not 
strong,  many  wide  ideas  are  very  dangerous.  Strong 
wills  are  not  fond  of  arguments,  and  if  a  young  person 

342 


MORAL  AND   RELIGIOUS  TRAINING 

falls  to  talking  or  thinking  beyond  his  experience,  sub- 
jective or  objective,  both  conduct  and  thought  are  soon 
confused  by  chaotic  and  incongruous  opinions  and  be- 
liefs; and  false  expectations,  which  are  the  very  se- 
ducers of  the  will,  arise.  There  can  be  little  will- 
training  by  words,  and  the  understanding  can  not  realize 
the  ideals  of  the  will.  All  great  things  are  dangerous, 
as  Plato  said,  and  the  truth  itself  is  not  only  false  but 
actually  immoral  to  unexpanded  minds.  Will-culture 
is  intensive,  not  extensive,  and  the  writer  knows  a  case 
in  which  even  a  vacation  ramble  with  a  moralizing 
rabulist  has  undermined  the  work  of  years.  Our  pre- 
cepts must  be  made  very  familiar,  copiously  illustrated, 
well  wrought  together  by  habit  and  attentive  thought, 
and  above  all  clear  cut,  that  the  pain  of  violating  them 
may  be  sharp  and  poignant.  Vague  and  too  general 
precepts  beyond  the  horizon  of  the  child's  real  experi- 
ence do  not  haunt  him  if  they  are  outraged.  Now  the 
child  must  obey  these,  and  will,  if  he  has  learned  to 
obey  well  the  command  of  others. 

One  of  the  bCvSt  sureties  that  he  will  do  so  is  muscle- 
culture,  for  if  the  latter  are  weaker  than  the  nerves 
and  brain,  the  gap  between  knowing  and  doing  appears 
and  the  will  stagnates.  Gutsmuths,  the  father  of  gym- 
nastics in  Germany  before  Jahn,  used  to  warn  men  not 
to  fancy  that  the  few  tiny  muscles  that  moved  the  pen 
or  tongue  had  power  to  elevate  men.  They  might  titil- 
late the  soul  with  words  and  ideas;  but  rigorous,  sym- 
metrical muscle-culture  alone,  he  and  his  Turner 
societies  believed,  could  regenerate  the  Fatherland,  for 
it  was  one  thing  to  paint  the  conflict  of  life,  and  quite 
another  to  bear  arms  in  it.  They  said,  ''  The  weaker 
the  body  the  more  it  commands;  the  stronger  it  is  the 
more  it  obeys.'* 

23  343 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

In  this  way  we  shall  have  a  strong,  well-knit  soul- 
texture,  made  up  of  volitions  and  ideas  like  warp  and 
woof.  Mind  and  will  will  be  so  compactly  organized 
that  all  their  forces  can  be  brought  to  a  single  point. 
Each  concept  or  purpose  will  call  up  those  related  to 
it,  and  once  strongly  set  toward  its  object,  the  soul  will 
find  itself  borne  along  by  unexpected  forces.  This 
power  of  totalizing,  rather  than  any  transcendent  re- 
lation of  elements,  constitutes  at  least  the  practical  unity 
of  the  soul,  and  this  unimpeded  association  of  its 
elements  is  true  or  inner  freedom  of  will.  Nothing  is 
wanting  or  lost  when  the  powers  of  the  soul  are 
mobilized  for  a  great  task,  and  its  substance  is  im- 
pervious to  passion.  With  this  organization,  men  of 
really  little  power  accomplish  wonders.  Without  it 
great  minds  are  confused  and  lost.  They  have  only 
velleity  or  caprice.  The  will  makes  a  series  of  vigor- 
ous, perhaps  almost  convulsive,  but  short,  inconsistent 
efforts.  As  Jean  Paul  says,  there  is  sulphur,  charcoal, 
and  saltpetre  in  the  soul,  but  powder  is  not  made,  for 
they  never  find  each  other.  To  understand  this  will- 
plexus  is  preeminent  among  the  new  demands  now  laid 
on  educators. 

But,  although  this  focalizing  power  of  acting  wdth 
the  whole  rather  than  with  a  part  of  the  soul,  gives 
independence  of  many  external,  conventional,  proximate 
standards  of  conduct,  deepening  our  interests  in  life, 
and  securing  us  against  disappointment  by  defining  our 
expectations,  while  such  a  sound  and  simple  will- 
philosophy  is  proof  against  considerable  shock  and  has 
firmness  of  texture  enough  to  bear  much  responsibility, 
there  is,  of  course,  something  deeper,  without  which  all 
our  good  conduct  is  more  or  less  hollow.  This  is 
that    better    purity    established    by    mothers    in    the 

344 


MORAL   AND   RELIGIOUS   TRAINING 

plastic  heart,  before  the  superfoetation  of  precept  is 
possible,  or  even  before  the  **  soul  takes  flight  in  lan- 
guage ";  it  is  perhaps  pre-natal  or  hereditary.  Much 
every  way  depends  on  how  aboriginal  our  goodness  is, 
whether  the  will  acts  with  effort,  as  we  solve  an  in- 
tricate problem,  in  solitude,  or  as  we  say  the  multiplica- 
tion table,  which  only  much  distraction  can  confuse, 
or  as  we  repeat  the  alphabet,  which  the  din  of  battle 
could  not  hinder.  Later  and  earlier  training  should  har- 
monize with  each  other  and  with  nature.  Thrice  happy 
he  who  is  so  wisely  trained  that  he  comes  to  believe  he 
believes  what  his  soul  deeply  does  believe,  to  say  what 
he  feels  and  feel  what  he  really  does  feel,  and  chiefly 
whose  express  volitions  square  with  the  profounder  drift 
of  his  will  as  the  resultant  of  all  he  has  desired  or  wished, 
expected,  attended  to,  or  striven  for.  When  such  an 
one  comes  to  his  moral  majority  by  standing  for  the 
first  time  upon  his  own  careful  conviction,  against  the 
popular  cry,  or  against  his  own  material  interests  or 
predaceous  passions,  and  feels  the  constraint  and  joy  of 
pure  obligation  which  comes  up  from  this  deep  source, 
a  new,  original  force  is  brought  into  the  world  of  wills. 
Call  it  inspiration,  or  Kant's  transcendental  impulse 
above  and  outside  of  experience,  or  Spencer's  deep  re- 
verberations from  a  vast  and  mysterious  past  of  com- 
pacted ancestral  experiences,  the  most  concentrated,  dis- 
tilled and  instinctive  of  all  psychic  products,  and  as  old 
as  Mr.  Tyndall's  "  fiery  cloud  " — the  name  or  even 
source  is  little.  We  would  call  it  the  purest,  freest, 
most  prevailing,  because  most  inward,  will  or  conscience. 
This  free,  habitual  guidance  by  the  highest  and  best, 
by  conviction  with  no  sense  of  compulsion  or  obligation, 
is  an  impractical  if  not  dangerous  ideal,  for  it  can  be 
actually  realized  only  by  the  rarest  moral  genius.     For 

345 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

most  of  us,  the  best  education  is  that  which  makes  us 
the  best  and  most  obedient  servants.  This  is  the  way 
of  peace  and  the  way  of  nature,  for  even  if  we  seri- 
ously try  to  keep  up  a  private  conscience  at  all,  apart 
from  feeling,  faction,  party  or  class  spirit,  or  even 
habit,  which  are  our  habitual  guides,  the  difficulties  are 
so  great  that  most  hasten,  more  or  less  consciously  and 
voluntarily,  to  put  themselves  under  authority  again, 
reserving  only  the  smallest  margin  of  independence  in 
material  interests,  choice  of  masters,  etc.,  and  yielding 
to  the  pleasing  and  easy  illusion  that  inflates  the  mini- 
mum to  seem  the  maximum  of  freedom,  and  uses  the 
noblest  ideal  of  history,  viz.,  that  of  pure  autonomous 
oughtness,  as  a  pedestal  for  idols  of  selfishness,  caprice 
and  conceit.  The  trouble  is  in  interpreting  these  moral 
instincts,  for  even  the  authorities  lack  the  requisite  self- 
knowledge  in  w^hich  all  wisdom  culminates.  The  moral 
interregnum  which  the  Aufkldrung  ^  has  brought  will 
not  end  till  these  instincts  are  rightly  interpreted  by  in- 
telligence. The  richest  streams  of  thought  must  flow 
about  them,  the  best  methods  must  peep  and  pry  till 
their  secrets  are  found  and  put  into  the  idea-pictures 
in  which  most  men  think. 

This  brings  us,  finally,  to  the  highest  and  also  im- 
mediately practical  method  of  moral  education,  viz., 
training  the  will  by  and  for  intellectual  work.  Youth 
and  childhood  must  not  be  subordinated  as  means  to 
maturity.  Learning  is  more  useful  than  knowing.  It 
is  the  way  and  not  the  goal,  the  work  and  not  the  prod- 
uct, the  acquiring  and  not  the  acquisition;  that  educates 
will  and  character.  To  teach  only  results,  which  are  so 
simple,  without  methods  by  which  they  were  obtained, 

•  1  Enlightenment. 

346 


MORAL  AND   RELIGIOUS  TRAINING 

which  are  so  complex  and  hard,  to  develop  the  sense  of 
possession  without  the  strain  of  activity,  to  teach  great 
matters  too  easily  or  even  as  play,  always  to  wind  along 
the  lines  of  least  resistance  into  the  child's  mind,  is 
simply  to  add  another  and  most  enervating  luxury  to 
child-life.  Only  the  sense  and  power  of  effort,  which 
made  Lessing  prefer  the  search  to  the  possession  of 
truth,  which  trains  the  will  in  the  intellectual  field, 
which  is  becoming  more  and  more  the  field  of  its  ac- 
tivity, counts  for  character  and  makes  instruction  really 
educating.  This  makes  mental  work  a  series  of  acts,  or 
living  thoughts,  and  not  merely  words.  Real  education, 
that  we  can  really  teach,  and  that  which  is  really  most 
examinable,  is  what  we  do,  while  those  who  acquire 
without  effort  may  be  extremely  instructed  without  being 
truly  educated. 

It  is  those  who  have  been  trained  to  put  forth  mental 
power  that  come  to  the  front  later,  while  it  is  only  those 
whose  acquisitions  are  not  transpeciated  into  power  who 
are  in  danger  of  early  collapse. 

It  is  because  of  this  imperfect  appropriation  through 
lack  of  volitional  reaction  that  mental  training  is  so 
often  dangerous,  especially  in  its  higher  grades.  Espe- 
cially wherever  good  precepts  are  allowed  to  rest  peace- 
fully beside  undiscarded  bad  habits,  moral  weakness  is 
directly  cultivated.  Volitional  recollection,  or  forcing 
the  mind  to  reproduce  a  train  of  impressions,  strength- 
ens what  we  may  call  the  mental  will ;  while  if  multifa- 
rious impressions  which  excite  at  the  time  are  left  to  take 
their  chances,  at  best,  fragmentary  reproduction,  incipi- 
ent amnesia,  the  prelude  of  mental  decay,  may  be  soon 
detected.  Few  can  endure  the  long  working  over  of 
ideas,  especially  if  at  all  fundamental,  which  is  needful 
to  full  maturity  of  mind,  without  grave  moral  danger. 

347 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

New  standpoints  and  ideas  require  new  combinations  of 
the  mental  elements,  with  constant  risk  that  during  the 
process,  what  was  already  secured  will  fall  back  into 
its  lower  components.  Even  our  immigrants  suffer  mor- 
ally from  the  change  of  manners  and  customs  and  ideas, 
and  yet  education  means  change ;  the  more  training  the 
more  change,  as  a  rule,  and  the  more  danger  during  the 
critical  transition  period  while  we  oscillate  between  con- 
trol by  old  habits,  or  association  within  the  old  circle  of 
thought,  and  by  the  new  insights,  as  a  medical  student 
often  suffers  from  trying  to  bring  the  regulation  of  his 
physical  functions  under  new  and  imperfect  hygienic 
insights.  Thus  most  especially  if  old  questions,  concern- 
ing which  we  have  long  since  ceased  to  trust  ourselves 
to  give  reasons,  need  to  be  reopened,  there  is  especial 
danger  that  the  new  equilibrium  about  which  the  dynamic 
is  to  be  re-resolved  into  static  power  will  be  established, 
if  at  all,  with  loss  instead  of  with  gain.  Indeed,  it  is  a 
question  not  of  schools  but  of  civilization,  whether  mental 
training,  from  the  three  R's  to  science  and  philosophy, 
shall  really  make  men  better,  as  the  theory  of  popular 
education  assumes,  and  whether  the  genius  and  talent  of 
the  few  who  can  receive  and  bear  it  can  be  brought  to  the 
full  maturity  of  a  knowledge  fully  f acultized — a  question 
paramount,  even  in  a  republic,  to  the  general  education 
of  the  many. 

The  illusion  is  that  beginnings  are  hard.  They  are 
easy.  Almost  any  mind  can  advance  a  little  way  into 
almost  any  subject.  The  feeblest  youth  can  push  on 
briskly  in  the  beginning  of  a  new  subject,  but  he  forgets, 
and  so  does  the  examiner  who  marks  him,  that  difficul- 
ties increase  not  in  arithmetical  but  in  almost  geometrical 
ratio  as  he  advances.  The  fact,  too,  that  all  topics  are 
taught  by  all  teachers  and  that  we  have  no  specialized 

348 


MORAL  AND   RELIGIOUS  TRAINING 

teaching  in  elementary  branches,  and  that  examina- 
tions are  placed  in  the  most  debilitating  part  of  our 
peculiarly  debilitating  spring,  these  help  us  to  solve  the 
problem  which  China  has  solved  so  well,  viz.,  how  to  in- 
struct and  not  to  educate.  A  pass  mark,  say  of  fifty, 
should  be  given  not  for  mastery  of  the  first  half  of  the 
book,  or  for  knowledge  of  half  the  matter  in  it,  but  for 
that  of  three-fourths  or  more.  Suppose  one  choose  the 
easier  method  of  tattooing  his  mind  by  attaining  the  easy 
early  stages  of  proficiency  in  many  subjects,  as  is  possible 
and  even  encouraged  in  too  many  of  our  school  and  col- 
lege curricula,  he  weakens  the  will-quality  of  his  mind. 
Smattering  is  dissipation  of  energy.  Only  great,  con- 
centrated and  prolonged  efforts  in  one  direction  really 
train  the  mind,  because  only  theij  train  the  will  beneath 
it.  Many  little,  heterogeneous  efforts  of  different  sorts 
leave  the  mind  in  a  muddle  of  heterogeneous  impressions, 
and  the  will  like  a  rubber  band  is  stretched  to  flaccidity 
around  one  after  another  bundle  of  objects  too  large  for 
it  to  clasp  into  unity.  Here  again,  in  der  Besclirdnkung 
zeigt  sich  der  Meister  ^ ;  all-sidedness  through  one-sided- 
ness ;  by  stalking  the  horse  or  cow  out  in  the  spring  time, 
till  he  gnaws  his  small  allotted  circle  of  grass  to  the 
ground,  and  not  by  roving  and  cropping  at  will,  can  he 
be  taught  that  the  sweetest  joint  is  nearest  the  root,  are 
convenient  symbols  of  will-culture  in  the  intellectual  field. 
Even  a  long  cram,  if  only  on  one  subject,  which  brings 
out  the  relations  of  the  parts,  or  a  "  one-study  college," 
as  is  already  devised  in  the  AVest,  or  the  combination  of 
several  subjects  even  in  primary  school  grades  into  a 
''  concentration  series,"  as  devised  by  Ziller  and  Rein, 
the  university  purpose  as  defined  by  Ziller  of  so  combin- 

1  The  master  shows  himself  in  self-hmitation. 

349 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

ing  studies  that  each  shall  stand  in  the  course  next  to 
that  with  which  it  is  inherently  closest  connected  by 
matter  and  method,  or  the  requirements  of  one  central 
and  two  collateral  branches  for  the  doctorate  examina- 
tion— all  these  devices  no  doubt  tend  to  give  a  sense  of 
efficiency,  which  is  one  of  the  deepest  and  proudest  joys 
of  life,  in  the  place  of  a  sense  of  possession  so  often 
attended  by  the  exquisite  misery  of  conscious  weakness. 
The  unity  of  almost  any  even  ideal  purpose  is  better 
than  none,  if  it  tend  to  check  the  superficial  one  of  learn- 
ing to  repeat  again  or  of  boxing  the  whole  compass  of 
sciences  and  liberal  arts,  as  so  many  of  our  high  schools 
or  colleges  attempt. 

Finally,  in  the  sphere  of  mental  productivity  and 
originality,  a  just  preponderance  of  the  will-element 
makes  men  distrust  new  insights,  quick  methods,  and 
short  cuts,  and  trust  chiefly  to  the  genius  of  honest  and 
sustained  work,  in  power  of  which  perhaps  lies  the  great- 
est intellectual  difference  between  men.  When  ideas  are 
ripe  for  promulgation  they  have  been  condensed  and 
concentrated,  thought  traverses  them  quickly  and  easily 
— in  a  word,  they  have  become  practical,  and  the  will  that 
waits  over  a  new  idea  patiently  and  silently,  without 
anxiety,  even  though  with  a  deepening  sense  of  respon- 
sibility, till  all  sides  have  been  seen,  all  authorities  con- 
sulted, all  its  latent  mental  reserves  heard  from,  is 
the  man  who  "  talks  with  the  rifle  and  not  with  the 
water-hose,"  or,  in  a  rough  farmer's  phrase,  *'  boils  his 
words  till  he  can  give  his  hearers  sugar  and  not  sap." 
Several  of  the  more  important  discoveries  of  the  present 
generation,  which  cost  many  weary  months  of  toil,  have 
been  enumerated  in  a  score  or  two  of  lines,  so  that  every 
experimenter  could  set  up  his  apparatus  and  get  the 
results  in  a  few  minutes.    Let  us  not  forget  that,  in  most 

350 


MORAL  AND   RELIGIOUS   TRAINING 

departments  of  mental  work,  the  more  we  revise  and  re- 
construct our  thought,  the  longer  we  inhibit  its  final  ex- 
pression, while  the  oftener  we  return  to  it  refreshed  from 
other  interests,  the  clearer  and  more  permeable  for  other 
minds  it  becomes,  because  the  more  it  tends  to  express  it- 
self in  terms  of  willed  action,  which  is  ' '  the  language  of 
complete  men. ' ' 

So  closely  bound  together  are  moral  and  religious 
training  that  a  discussion  of  one  without  the  other  would 
be  incomplete.  In  a  word,  religion  is  the  most  generic 
kind  of  culture  as  opposed  to  all  systems  or  departments 
which  are  one-sided.  All  education  culminates  in  it  be- 
cause it  is  chief  among  human  interests,  and  because  it 
gives  inner  unity  to  the  mind,  heart,  and  will.  How  now 
should  this  common  element  of  union  be  taught  1 

To  be  really  effective  and  lasting,  moral  and  re^ 
ligious  training  must  begin  in  the  cradle.  It  was  a 
profound  remark  of  Froebel  that  the  unconsciousness  of 
a  child  is  rest  in  God.  This  need  not  be  understood  in 
any  pantheistic  sense.  From  this  rest  in  God  the  child- 
ish soul  should  not  be  abruptly  or  prematurely  aroused. 
Even  the  primeval  stages  of  psychic  growth  are  rarely 
so  all-sided,  so  purely  unsolicited,  spontaneous,  and  un- 
precocious,  as  not  to  be  in  a  sense  a  fall  from  Froebel's 
unconsciousness  or  rest  in  God.  The  sense  of  touch,  the 
mother  of  all  the  other  senses,  is  the  only  one  which  the 
child  brings  into  the  world  already  experienced ;  but  by 
the  pats,  caresses,  hugs,  etc.,  so  instinctive  with  young 
mothers,  varied  feelings  and  sentiments  are  communi- 
cated to  the  child  long  before  it  recognizes  its  own  body 
as  distinct  from  things  about  it.  The  mother's  face  and 
voice  are  the  first  conscious  objects  as  the  infant  soul 
unfolds,  and  she  soon  comes  to  stand  in  the  very  place 
of  God  to  her  child.     All  the  religion  of  which  the  child 

351 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

is  capable  during  this  by  no  means  brief  stage  of  its 
development  consists  of  those  sentiments — gratitude, 
trust,  dependence,  love,  etc.,  now  felt  only  for  her — 
which  are  later  directed  toward  God.  The  less  these 
are  now  cultivated  toward  the  mother,  who  is  now  their 
only  fitting  if  not  their  only  possible  object,  the  more 
feebly  they  will  later  be  felt  toward  God.  This,  too, 
adds  greatly  to  the  sacredness  and  the  responsibilities 
of  motherhood.  Froebel  perhaps  is  right  that  thus 
fundamental  religious  sentiments  can  be  cultivated  in 
the  earliest  months  of  infancy.  It  is  of  course  impossi- 
ble not  to  seem,  perhaps  even  not  to  be,  sentimental  upon 
this  theme,  for  the  infant  soul  has  no  other  content  than 
sentiments,  and  because  upon  these  rests  the  whole 
superstructure  of  religion  in  child  or  adult.  The  moth- 
er's emotions,  and  physical  and  mental  states,  indeed, 
are  imparted  and  reproduced  in  the  infant  so  immedi- 
ately, unconsciously,  and  through  so  many  avenues, 
that  it  is  no  wonder  that  these  relations  seem  mystic. 
Whether  the  mother  is  habitually  under  the  influence 
of  calm  and  tranquil  emotions,  or  her  temper  is  fluc- 
tuating or  violent,  or  her  movements  are  habitually 
energetic  or  soft  and  caressing,  or  she  be  regular  or 
irregular  in  her  ministrations  to  the  infant  in  her  arms, 
all  these  characteristics  and  habits  are  registered  in  the 
primeval  language  of  touch  upon  the  nervous  system  of 
the  child.  From  this  point  of  view,  poise  and  calmness, 
the  absence  of  all  intense  stimuli  and  of  sensations  or 
transitions  which  are  abrupt  or  sudden,  and  an  atmos- 
phere of  quieting  influences,  like  everything  which  re- 
tards by  broadening,  is  in  the  general  line  of  religious 
culture.  The  soul  of  an  infant  is  well  compared  to  a 
seed  planted  in  a  garden.  It  is  not  pressed  or  moved 
by  the  breezes  which  rustle  the  leaves  overhead.     The 

352 


MORAL   AND  RELIGIOUS   TRAINING 

sunlight  does  not  fall  upon  it,  and  even  dew  and  even- 
ing coolness  scarcely  reach  it;  but  yet  there  is  not  a 
breath  of  air,  nor  a  ray  of  sunshine,  nor  a  drop  of 
moisture  to  which  it  is  unresponsive,  and  which  does 
not  stir  all  its  germinant  forces.  The  child  is  a  plant, 
must  live  out  of  doors  in  proper  season,  and  there  must 
be  no  forcing.  Religion,  then,  at  this  important  stage, 
at  least,  is  naturalism  pure  and  simple,  and  religious 
training  is  the  supreme  art  of  standing  out  of  nature's 
way.  So  implicit  is  the  unity  of  soul  and  body  at  this 
formative  age  that  care  of  the  body  is  the  most  effective 
ethico-religious  culture. 

Next  to  be  considered  are  the  sentiments  which  un- 
fold under  the  influence  of  that  fresh  and  naive  curiosity 
which  attends  the  first  impressions  of  natural  objects 
from  which  both  religion  and  science  spring  as  from 
one  common  root.  The  awe  and  sublimity  of  a  thunder- 
storm, the  sights  and  sounds  of  a  spring  morning,  objects 
which  lead  the  child's  thoughts  to  what  is  remote  in  time 
and  space,  old  trees,  ruins,  the  rocks,  and,  above  all,  the 
heavenly  bodies — the  utilization  of  these  lessons  is  the 
most  important  task  of  the  religious  teacher  during 
the  kindergarten  stage  of  childhood.  Still  more  than 
the  undevout  astronomer,  the  undevout  child  under  such 
influences  is  abnormal.  In  these  directions  the  mind  of 
the  child  is  as  open  and  plastic  as  that  of  the  ancient 
prophet  to  the  promptings  of  the  inspiring  Spirit.  The 
child  can  recognize  no  essential  difference  between  nature 
and  the  supernatural,  and  the  products  of  mythopceic 
fancy  w^hich  have  been  spun  about  natural  objects,  and 
which  have  lain  so  long  and  so  warm  about  the  hearts  of 
generations  and  races  of  men,  are  now  the  best  of  all 
nutriments  for  the  soul.  To  teach  scientific  rudiments 
only  about  nature,  on  the  shallow  principle  that  nothing 

353 


YOUTH  :    ITS   EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

should  be  taught  which  must  be  unlearned,  or  to  en- 
courage the  child  to  assume  the  critical  attitude  of  mind, 
is  dwarfing  the  heart  and  prematurely  forcing  the  head. 
It  has  been  said  that  country  life  is  religion  for  chil- 
dren at  this  stage.  However  this  may  be,  it  is  clear  that 
natural  religion  is  rooted  in  such  experiences,  and  pre- 
cedes revealed  religion  in  the  order  of  growth  and  educa- 
tion, whatever  its  logical  order  in  systems  of  thought 
may  be.  A  little  later,  habits  of  truthfulness  ^  are  best 
cultivated  by  the  use  of  the  senses  in  exact  observation. 
To  see  a  simple  phenomenon  in  nature  and  report  it  fully 
and  correctly  is  no  easy  matter,  but  the  habit  of  trying 
to  do  so  teaches  what  truthfulness  is,  and  leaves  the 
impress  of  truth  upon  the  whole  life  and  character. 
I  do  not  hesitate  to  say,  therefore,  that  elements  of 
science  should  be  taught  to  children  for  the  moral  effects 
of  its  influences.  At  the  same  time  all  truth  is  not 
sensuous,  and  this  training  alone  at  this  age  tends  to 
make  the  mind  pragmatic,  dry,  and  insensitive  or  un- 
responsive to  that  other  kind  of  truth  the  value  of  which 
is  not  measured  by  its  certainty  so  much  as  by  its 
effect  upon  us.  We  must  learn  to  interpret  the  heart 
and  our  native  instincts  as  truthfully  as  we  do  external 
nature,  for  our  happiness  in  life  depends  quite  as  largely 
upon  bringing  our  beliefs  into  harmony  with  the  deeper 
feelings  of  our  nature  as  it  does  upon  the  ability  to 
adapt  ourselves  to  our  physical  environment.  Thus  not 
only  all  religious  beliefs  and  moral  acts  will  strengthen 
if  they  truly  express  the  character  instead  of  cultivat- 
ing affectation  and  insincerity  in  opinion,  word,  and 
deed,   as   with  mistaken  pedagogic   methods   they   may 

1  For  most  recent  and  elaborate  study  of  children's  lies  see  Zeitschrift 
fiir  pftdagogisclie  Psychologic,  Pathologic  und  Hygiene,  Juli,  1905.  Jahr- 
gang  7,  Heft  3,  pp.  177-205. 

354 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  TRAINING 

do.  This  latter  can  be  avoided  only  by  leaving  all  to 
naturalism  and  spontaneity  at  first,  and  feeding  the  soul 
only  according  to  its  appetites  and  stage  of  growth. 
No  religious  truth  must  be  taught  as  fundamental — 
especially  as  fundamental  to  morality — which  can  be 
seriously  doubted  or  even  misunderstood.  Yet  it  must 
be  expected  that  convictions  will  be  transformed  and 
worked  over  and  over  again,  and  only  late,  if  at  all,  will 
an  equilibrium  between  the  heart  and  the  truth  it  clings 
to  as  finally  satisfying  be  attained.  Hence  most  positive 
religious  instruction,  or  public  piety,  if  taught  at  all, 
should  be  taught  briefly  as  most  serious  but  too  high  for 
the  child  yet,  or  as  rewards  to  stimulate  curiosity  for  them 
later,  but  sacred  things  should  not  become  too  familiar  or 
be  conventionalized  before  they  can  be  felt  or  understood. 

The  child's  conception  of  God  should  not  be  personal 
or  too  familiar  at  first,  but  He  should  appear  distant  and 
vague,  inspiring  awe  and  reverence  far  more  than  love; 
in  a  word,  as  the  God  of  nature  rather  than  as  devoted  to 
serviceable  ministrations  to  the  child's  individual  wants. 
The  latter  should  be  taught  to  be  a  faithful  servant 
rather  than  a  favorite  of  God.  The  inestimable  peda- 
gogic value  of  the  God-idea  consists  in  that  it  widens  the 
child's  glimpse  of  the  whole,  and  gives  the  first  present- 
iment of  the  universality  of  laws,  such  as  are  observed 
in  its  experiences  and  that  of  others,  so  that  all  things 
seem  comprehended  under  one  stable  system  or  gov- 
ernment. The  slow  realization  that  God's  laws  are  not 
like  those  of  parents  and  teachers,  evadible,  suspensible, 
but  changeless,  and  their  penalties  sure  as  the  laws  of 
nature,  is  a  most  important  factor  of  moral  training. 
First  the  law,  the  schoolmaster,  then  the  Gospel;  first 
nature,  then  grace,  is  the  order  of  growth. 

The  pains  or  pleasures  which  follow  many  acts  are 
355 


YOUTH :  ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

immediate,  while  the  results  that  follow  others  are  so 
remote  or  so  serious  that  the  child  must  utilize  the  ex- 
perience of  others.  Artificial  rewards  and  punishments 
must  be  cunningly  devised  so  as  to  simulate  and  typify 
as  closely  as  possible  the  real  natural  penalty,  and  they 
must  be  administered  uniformly  and  impartially  like 
laws  of  nature.  As  commands  are  just,  and  as  they  are 
gradually  perceived  to  spring  from  superior  wisdom, 
respect  arises,  which  Kant  called  the  bottom  motive  of 
duty,  and  defined  as  the  immediate  determination  of  the 
will  by  law,  thwarting  self-love.  Here  the  child  rev- 
erences what  is  not  understood  as  authority,  and  to  the 
childish  '^  Why?  "  which  always  implies  imperfect  re- 
spect for  the  authority,  however  displeasing  its  behest, 
the  teacher  or  parent  should  always  reply,  ^ '  You  cannot 
understand  why  yet, ' '  unless  quite  sure  that  a  convincing 
and  controlling  insight  can  be  given,  such  as  shall  make 
all  future  exercise  of  outward  authority  in  this  particu- 
lar unnecessary.  From  this  standpoint  the  great  im- 
portance of  the  character  and  native  dignity  of  the 
teacher  is  best  seen.  Daily  contact  with  some  teachers  is 
itself  all-sided  ethical  education  for  the  child  without  a 
spoken  precept.  Here,  too,  the  real  advantage  of  male 
over  female  teachers,  especially  for  boys,  is  seen  in  their 
superior  physical  strength,  which  often,  if  highly  esti- 
mated, gives  real  dignity  and  commands  real  respect, 
and  especially  in  the  unquestionably  greater  uniformity 
of  their  moods  and  their  discipline. 

During  the  first  years  of  school  life,  a  point  of  prime 
importance  in  ethico-religious  training  is  the  education 
of  conscience.  This  latter  is  the  most  complex  and  per- 
haps the  most  educable  of  all  our  so-called  "  faculties.'* 
A  system  of  carefully  arranged  talks,  with  copious  illus- 
trations from  history  and  literature,  about  such  topics  as 

356 


MORAL  AND   RELIGIOUS  TRAINING 

fair  play,  slang,  cronies,  dress,  teasing,  getting  mad, 
prompting  in  class,  white  lies,  affectation,  cleanliness, 
order,  honor,  taste,  self-respect,  treatment  of  animals, 
reading,  vacation  pursuits,  etc.,  can  be  brought  quite 
within  the  range  of  boy-and-girl  interests  by  a  sym- 
pathetic and  tactful  teacher,  and  be  made  immediately 
and  obviously  practical.  All  this  is  nothing  more  or  less 
than  conscience-building.  The  old  superstition  that 
children  have  innate  faculties  of  such  a  finished  sort  that 
they  flash  up  and  grasp  the  principle  of  things  by  a 
rapid  sort  of  first  "  intellection,"  an  error  that  made 
all  departments  of  education  so  trivial,  assumptive  and 
dogmatic  for  centuries  before  Comenius,  Basedow  and 
Pestalozzi,  has  been  banished  everywhere  save  from 
moral  and  religious  training,  where  it  still  persists  in 
full  force.  The  senses  develop  first,  and  all  the  higher 
intuitions  called  by  the  collective  name  of  conscience 
gradually  and  later  in  life.  They  first  take  the  form  of 
sentiments  without  much  insight,  and  are  hence  liable 
to  be  unconscious  affectation,  and  are  caught  insensibly 
from  the  environment  with  the  aid  of  inherited  pre- 
disposition, and  only  made  more  definite  by  such  talks 
as  the  above.  But  parents  are  prone  to  forget  that 
healthful  and  correct  sentiments  concerning  matters  of 
conduct  are,  at  first,  very  feeble,  and  that  the  sense 
of  obligation  needs  the  long  and  careful  guardianship 
of  external  authority.  Just  as  a  young  medical  student 
with  a  rudimentary  notion  of  physiology  and  hygiene 
is  sometimes  disposed  to  undertake  a  more  or  less  com- 
plete reform  of  his  diet,  regimen,  etc.,  to  make  it 
"  scientific  "  in  a  way  that  an  older  and  a  more  learned 
physician  would  shrink  from,  so  the  half-insights  of 
boys  into  matters  of  moral  regimen  are  far  too  apt,  in 
the   American   temperament,   to   expend,   in   precocious 

357 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

emancipation  and  crude  attempts  at  practical  realization, 
the  force  which  is  needed  to  bring  their  insights  to 
maturity.  Authority  should  be  relaxed  gradually,  ex- 
plicitly, and  provisionally  over  one  definite  department 
of  conduct  at  a  time.  To  distinguish  right  and  wrong 
in  their  own  nature  is  the  highest  and  most  complex  of 
intellectual  processes.  Most  men  and  all  children  are 
guided  only  by  associations  of  greater  or  less  subtlety. 
Perhaps  the  whole  round  of  human  duties  might  be  best 
taught  by  gathering  illustrations  of  selfishness  and  trac- 
ing it  in  its  countless  disguises  and  ramifications  through 
every  stage  of  life.  Selfishness  is  opposed  to  a  sense  of 
the  infinite  and  is  inversely  as  real  religion,  and  the 
study  of  it  is  not,  like  systematic  ethics,  apt  to  be  con- 
fused and  made  unpractical  by  conflicting  theories. 

The  Bible,  the  great  instrument  in  the  education  of 
conscience,  is  far  less  juvenile  than  it  is  now  the  fashion 
to  suppose.  At  the  very  least,  it  expresses  the  result  of 
the  ripest  human  experience,  the  noblest  traditions  of 
humanity.  Old  Testament  history,  even  more  than  most 
very  ancient  history,  is  distilled  to  an  almost  purely 
ethical  content.  For  centuries  Scripture  was  withheld 
from  the  masses  for  the  same  reason  that  Plato  refused 
at  first  to  put  his  thoughts  into  writing,  because  it 
would  be  sure  to  be  misunderstood  by  very  many  and 
lead  to  that  worst  of  errors  and  fanaticism  caused  by 
half-truths.     Children  should  not  approach  it  too  lightly. 

The  Old  Testament,  perhaps  before  or  more  than  the 
New,  is  the  Bible  for  childhood.  A  good,  protracted 
course  of  the  law  pedagogically  prepares  the  way  for  the 
apprehension  of  the  Gospel.  Then  the  study  of  the  Old 
Testament  should  begin  with  selected  tales,  told,  as  in 
the  German  schools,  impressively,  in  the  teacher's  lan- 
guage, but  objectively,  and  without  exegetical  or  horta- 

358 


MORAL  AND   RELIGIOUS  TRAINING 

tory  comment.  The  appeal  is  directly  to  the  under- 
standing only  at  first,  but  the  moral  lesson  is  brought 
clearly  and  surely  within  the  child's  reach,  but  not 
personally  applied  after  the  manner  common  with  us. 

Probably  the  most  important  changes  for  the  educator 
to  study  are  those  which  begin  between  the  ages  of 
twelve  and  sixteen  and  are  completed  only  some  years 
later,  when  the  young  adolescent  receives  from  nature  a 
new  capital  of  energy  and  altruistic  feeling.  It  is  a 
physiological  second  birth,  and  success  in  life  depends 
upon  the  care  and  wisdom  with  which  this  new  and 
final  invoice  of  energy  is  husbanded.  These  changes 
constitute  a  natural  predisposition  to  a  change  of  heart, 
and  may  perhaps  be  called,  in  Kantian  phrase,  its  schema. 
Even  from  the  psychophysic  standpoint  it  is  a  correct 
instinct  which  has  slowly  led  churches  to  center  so  much 
of  their  cultus  upon  regeneration.  In  this  I,  of  course, 
only  assert  here  the  neurophysical  side,  which  is  every- 
where present,  even  if  everywhere  subordinate  to  the 
spiritual  side.  As  everywhere,  so  here,  too,  the  physical 
may  be  called  in  a  sense  regulative  rather  than  con- 
stitutive. It  is  therefore  not  surprising  that  statistics 
show  that  far  more  conversions,  proportionately,  take 
place  during  the  adolescent  period,  which  does  not  nor- 
mally end  before  the  age  of  twenty-four  or  five,  than  dur- 
ing any  other  period  of  equal  length.  At  this  age  most 
churches  confirm. 

Before  this  age  the  child  lives  in  the  present,  is  nor- 
mally selfish,  deficient  in  sympathy,  but  frank  and  con- 
fidential, obedient  to  authority,  and  without  affecta- 
tion save  the  supreme  affectation  of  childhood,  viz., 
assuming  the  words,  manners,  habits,  etc.,  of  those  older 
than  itself.  But  now  stature  suddenly  increases,  and  the 
power  of  physical  and  mental  endurance  and  effort 
24  359 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN.  AND  HYGIENE 

diminishes  for  a  time;  larynx,  nose,  chin  change,  and 
normal  and  morbid  ancestral  traits  and  features  appear. 
Far  greater  and  more  protracted,  though  unseen,  are  the 
changes  which  take  place  in  the  nervous  system,  both  in 
the  development  of  the  cortex  and  expansion  of  the 
convolutions  and  the  growth  of  association-fibers  by 
which  the  elements  shoot  together  and  relation  of  things 
are  seen,  which  hitherto  seemed  independent,  to  which  it 
seems  as  if  for  a  few  years  the  energies  of  growth  were 
chiefly  directed.  Hence  this  period  is  so  critical  and 
changes  in  character  are  so  rapid.  No  matter  how  confi- 
dential the  relations  with  the  parent  may  have  been,  an 
important  domain  of  the  soul  now  declares  its  independ- 
ence. Confidences  are  shared  with  those  of  equal  age  and 
withheld  from  parents,  especially  by  boys,  to  an  extent 
probably  little  suspected  by  most  parents.  Education 
must  be  addressed  to  freedom,  which  recognizes  only  self- 
made  law,  and  spontaneity  of  opinion  and  conduct  is 
manifested,  often  in  extravagant  and  grotesque  forms. 
There  is  now  a  longing  for  that  kind  of  close  sympathy 
and  friendship  which  makes  cronies  and  intimates ;  there 
is  a  craving  for  strong  emotions  which  gives  pleasure  in 
exaggerations ;  and  there  are  nameless  longings  for  what 
is  far,  remote,  strange,  which  emphasizes  the  self-es- 
trangement which  Hegel  so  well  describes,  and  which 
marks  the  normal  rise  of  the  presentiment  of  something 
higher  than  self.  Instincts  of  rivalry  and  competition 
now  grow  strong  in  boys,  and  girls  grow  more  conscien- 
tious and  inward,  and  begin  to  feel  their  music,  reading, 
religion,  painting,  etc.,  and  to  realize  the  bearing  of 
these  upon  their  future  adult  life.  There  is  often  a 
strong  instinct  of  devotion  and  self-sacrifice  toward  some, 
perhaps  almost  any,  object,  or  in  almost  any  cause  which 
circumstances  may  present.     Moodiness  and  perhaps  a 

360 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  TRAINING 

love  of  solitude  are  developed.  "  Growing  fits  "  make 
hard  and  severe  labor  of  body  and  mind  impossible  with- 
out dwarfing  or  arresting  the  development,  by  robbing 
of  its  nutrition  some  part  of  the  organism — ^stomach, 
lungs,  chest,  heart,  back,  brain,  etc. — which  is  peculiarly 
liable  to  disease  later.  It  is  never  so  hard  to  tell  the 
truth  plainly  and  objectively  and  without  any  subjective 
twist.  The  life  of  the  mere  individual  ceases  and  that 
of  person,  or  better,  of  the  race,  begins.  It  is  a  period  of 
realization,  and  hence  often  of  introspection.  In  healthy 
natures  it  is  the  golden  age  of  life,  in  which  enthusiasm, 
sympathy,  generosity,  and  curiosity  are  at  their  strongest 
and  best,  and  when  growth  is  so  rapid  that,  e.  g.,  each 
college  class  is  conscious  of  a  vast  interval  of  development 
which  separates  it  from  the  class  below;  but  it  is  also  a 
period  subject  to  Wertherian  crises,  such  as  Hume, 
Richter,  J.  S.  Mill,  and  others  passed  through,  and  all 
depends  on  the  direction  given  to  these  new  forces. 

The  dangers  of  this  period  are  great  and  manifest. 
The  chief  of  these,  far  greater  even  than  the  dangers  of 
intemperance,  is  that  the  sexual  elements  of  soul  and 
body  will  be  developed  prematurely  and  disproportion- 
ately. Indeed,  early  maturity  in  this  respect  is  itself  bad. 
If  it  occurs  before  other  compensating  and  controlling 
powers  are  unfolded,  this  element  is  hypertrophied  and 
absorbs  and  dwarfs  their  energy  and  it  is  then  more 
likely  to  be  uninstructed  and  to  suck  up  all  that  is  vile 
in  the  environment.  Far  more  than  we  realize,  the 
thoughts  and  feelings  of  youth  center  about  this  factor 
of  his  nature.  Quite  apart,  therefore,  from  its  intrinsic 
value,  education  should  serve  the  purpose  of  preoccupa- 
tion, and  should  divert  attention  from  an  element  of  our 
nature  the  premature  or  excessive  development  of  which 
dwarfs  every  part  of  soul  and  body.     Intellectual  in- 

361 


YOUTH  :  ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND  HYGIENE 

terests,  athleticism,  social  and  esthetic  tastes,  should  be 
cultivated.  There  should  be  some  change  in  external 
life.  Previous  routine  and  drill-work  must  be  broken 
through  and  new  occupations  resorted  to,  that  the  mind 
may  not  be  left  idle  while  the  hands  are  mechanically 
employed.  Attractive  home-life,  friendships  well  chosen 
and  on  a  high  plane,  and  regular  habits,  should  of  course 
be  cultivated.  Now,  too,  though  the  intellect  is  not 
frequently  judged  insane,  so  that  pubescent  insanity  is 
comparatively  rare,  the  feelings,  which  are  yet  more 
fundamental  to  mental  sanity,  are  most  often  perverted, 
and  lack  of  emotional  steadiness,  violent  and  dangerous 
impulses,  unreasonable  conduct,  lack  of  enthusiasm  and 
sympathy,  are  very  commonly  caused  by  abnormalities 
here.  Neurotic  disturbances,  such  as  hysteria,  chorea, 
and,  in  the  opinion  of  some  physicians,  sick-headache  and 
early  dementia  are  peculiarly  liable  to  appear  and  be- 
come seated  during  this  period.  In  short,  the  previous 
selfhood  is  broken  up  like  the  regulation  copy  hand- 
writing of  early  school  years,  and  a  new  individual  is  in 
process  of  crystallization.  All  is  solvent,  plastic,  pe- 
culiarly susceptible  to  external  influences. 

Between  love  and  religion,  God  and  nature  have 
wrought  a  strong  and  indissoluble  bond.  Flagellations, 
fasts,  exposure,  excessive  penances  of  many  kinds,  the 
Hindoo  cultus  of  quietude,  and  mental  absorption  in 
vacuity  and  even  one  pedagogic  motive  of  a  cultus  of  the 
spiritual  and  supernatural,  e.  g.  in  the  symposium  of 
Plato,  are  all  designed  as  palliatives  and  alteratives  of 
degraded  love.  Change  of  heart  before  pubescent  years, 
there  are  several  scientific  reasons  for  thinking,  means 
precocity  and  forcing.  The  age  signalized  by  the  ancient 
Greeks  as  that  at  which  the  study  of  what  was  com- 
prehensively called  music  should  begin,  the  age  at  which 

362 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  TRAINING 

Roman  guardianship  ended,  as  explained  by  Sir  Henry 
Maine,  at  which  boys  are  confirmed  in  the  modern  Greek, 
Catholic,  Lutheran  and  Episcopal  churches,  and  at  which 
the  child  Jesus  entered  the  temple,  is  as  early  as  any 
child  ought  consciously  to  go  about  his  heavenly  Father 's 
business.  If  children  are  instructed  in  the  language 
of  these  sentiments  too  early,  the  all-sided  deepening  and 
broadening  of  soul  and  of  conscience  which  should  come 
with  adolescent  years  will  be  incomplete.  Revival  ser- 
mons which  the  writer  has  heard  preached  to  very  young 
children  are  analogous  to  exhorting  them  to  imagine 
themselves  married  people  and  inculcating  the  duties  of 
that  relation.  It  is  because  this  precept  is  violated  in  the 
intemperate  haste  for  immediate  results  that  we  may  so 
often  hear  childish  sentiments  and  puerile  expressions  so 
strangely  mingled  in  the  religious  experience  of  otherwise 
apparently  mature  adults,  which  remind  one  of  a  male 
voice  constantly  modulating  from  manly  tones  into  boyish 
falsetto.  Some  one  has  said  of  very  early  risers  that 
they  were  apt  to  be  conceited  all  the  forenoon,  and  stupid 
and  uninteresting  all  the  afternoon  and  evening.  So, 
too,  precocious  infant  Christians  are  apt  to  be  conceited 
and  full  of  pious  affectations  all  the  forenoon  of  life,  and 
thereafter  commonplace  enough  in  their  religious  life. 
One  is  reminded  of  Aristotle's  theory  of  Catharsis,  ac- 
cording to  which  the  soul  was  purged  of  strong  or  bad 
passions  by  listening  to  vivid  representations  of  them  oh 
the  stage.  So,  by  the  forcing  method  we  deprecate,  the 
soul  is  given  just  enough  religious  stimulus  to  act  as  an 
inoculation  against  deeper  and  more  serious  interest 
later.  At  this  age  the  prescription  of  a  series  of  strong 
feelings  is  very  apt  to  cause  attention  to  concentrate  on 
physical  states  in  a  way  which  may  culminate  in  the  in- 
creased activity  of  the  passional  nature,  or  may  induce 

363 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

that  sort  of  self-flirtation  which  is  expressed  in  morbid 
love  of  autobiographic  confessional  outpourings,  or  may 
issue  in  the  supreme  selfishness  of  incipient  and  often 
unsuspected  hysteria.  Those  who  are  led  to  Christ  nor- 
mally by  obeying  conscience  are  not  apt  to  endanger  the 
foundation  of  their  moral  character  if  they  should  later 
chance  to  doubt  the  doctrine  of  verbal  inspiration  or 
some  of  the  miracles,  or  even  get  confused  about  the 
Trinity,  because  their  religious  nature  is  not  built  on  the 
sand.  The  art  of  leading  young  men  through  college 
without  ennobling  or  enlarging  any  of  the  religious 
notions  of  childhood  is  anti-pedagogic  and  unworthy 
philosophy,  and  is  to  leave  men  puerile  in  the  highest  de- 
partment of  their  nature. 

At  the  age  we  have  indicated,  when  the  young  man 
instinctively  takes  the  control  of  himself  into  his  own 
hands,  previous  ethico-religious  training  should  be 
brought  to  a  focus  and  given  a  personal  application, 
which,  to  be  most  effective,  should  probably,  in  most 
cases,  be  according  to  the  creed  of  the  parent.  It  is  a 
serious  and  solemn  epoch,  and  ought  to  be  fittingly  sig- 
nalized. Morality  now  needs  religion,  which  cannot  have 
affected  life  much  before.  Now  duties  should  be  recog- 
nized as  divine  commands,  for  the  strongest  motives, 
natural  and  supernatural,  are  needed  for  the  regulation 
of  the  new  impulses,  passions,  desires,  half-insights,  am- 
bitions, etc.,  which  come  to  the  American  temperament 
so  suddenly  before  the  methods  of  self-regulation  can 
become  established  and  operative.  Now  a  deep  personal 
sense  of  purity  and  impurity  are  first  possible,  and  indeed 
inevitable,  and  this  natural  moral  tension  is  a  great  op- 
portunity to  the  religious  teacher.  A  serious  sense  of 
God  within,  and  of  responsibilities  which  transcend  this 
life  as  they  do  the  adolescent 's  power  of  comprehension ; 

364 


MORAL   AND   RELIGIOUS   TRAINING 

a  feeling  for  duties  deepened  by  a  realization  and  ex- 
perience of  their  conflict  such  as  some  have  thought  to  be 
the  origin  of  religion  itself  in  the  soul — these,  too,  are 
elements  of  the  ' '  theology  of  the  heart  ' '  revealed  at  this 
age  to  every  serious  youth,  but  to  the  judicious  em- 
phasis and  utilization  of  which,  the  teacher  should  lend 
his  consummate  skill.  While  special  lines  of  interest 
leading  to  a  career  must  be  now  well  grounded,  there 
must  also  be  a  culture  of  the  ideal  and  an  absorption  in 
general  views  and  remote  and  universal  ends.  If  all  that 
is  pure  and  disciplining  in  what  is  transcendent,  whether 
to  the  Christian  believers,  the  poet  or  the  philosopher, 
had  even  been  devised  only  for  the  better  regulation  of 
human  energies  set  free  at  this  age,  but  not  yet  fully 
defined  or  realized,  they  would  still  have  a  most  potent 
justification  on  this  ground  alone.  At  any  rate,  what  is 
often  wasted  in  excess  here,  if  husbanded,  ripens  into 
philosophy,  the  larger  love  to  the  world,  the  true  and 
the  good,  in  a  sense  not  unlike  that  in  the  symposium  of 
Plato. 

Finally,  there  is  danger  lest  this  change,  as  prescribed 
and  formulated  by  the  church,  be  too  sudden  and  violent, 
and  the  capital  of  moral  force  which  should  last  a  life- 
time be  consumed  in  a  brief,  convulsive  effort,  like  the 
sudden  running  down  of  a  watch  if  its  spring  be  broken. 
Piety  is  naturally  the  slowest  because  the  most  compre- 
hensive kind  of  growth.  Quetelet  says  that  the  meas- 
ure of  the  state  of  civilization  in  a  nation  is  the  way  in 
which  it  achieves  its  revolutions.  As  it  becomes  truly 
civilized,  revolutions  cease  to  be  sudden  and  violent,  and 
become  gradually  transitory  and  without  abrupt  change. 
The  same  is  true  of  that  individual  crisis  which  psycho- 
physiology  describes  as  adolescence,  and  of  which  theolo- 
gy formulates  a  higher  spiritual  potency  as  conversion. 

365 


YOUTH  :    ITS  EDUCATION,  REGIMEN,  AND   HYGIENE 

The  adolescent  period  lasts  ten  years  or  more,  during  all 
of  which  development  of  every  sort  is  very  rapid  and 
constant,  and  it  is,  as  already  remarked,  intemperate 
haste  for  immediate  results,  of  reaping  without  sowing, 
which  has  made  so  many  regard  change  of  heart  as  an 
instantaneous  conquest  rather  than  as  a  growth,  and 
persistently  to  forget  that  there  is  something  of  impor- 
tance before  and  after  it  in  healthful  religious  experience. 


366 


GLOSSARY 


Agamic.     Unmarried;   unmarriageable;  sometimes  non-sexed. 

Agenic.     Lacking  in  reproductive  power;   sterile. 

Amphimixis.  That  form  of  reproduction  which  involves  the 
mingling  of  substance  from  two  individuals  so  as  to  effect 
a  mixture  of  hereditary  characteristics.  It  includes  the 
phenomena  of  conjugation  and  fertilization  among  both 
unicellular  and  multicellular  organisms. 

Anabolism.     See  Metabolism. 

Anamnesic.     Pertaining  to  or  aiding  recollection. 

Anemic.     Deficient  in  blood;  bloodless. 

Anthropomorphism.  The  attributing  of  human  characteristics 
to  natural,  supernatural,  or  divine  beings. 

Anthropometry.     Science  of  measurement  of  the  human  body. 

Artifact.     Any  artificial  product. 

Aphasia.  Impairment  or  loss  of  the  ability  to  understand  or 
use  speech. 

Associationism.  The  psychological  theory  which  regards  the 
laws  of  association  as  the  fundamental  laws  of  mental  action 
and  development. 

Atavistic.  Pertaining  to  reversion  through  the  influence  of 
heredity  to  remote  ancestral  characteristics. 

Ataxic.  Pertaining  to  inability  to  coordinate  voluntary  move- 
ments; irregular. 

Calamo-papyrus.     Reed  papyrus  or  pen-paper. 

Catabolism.     See  Metabolism. 

Catharsis.  Purgation  or  cleansing.  Aristotle's  esthetic  theory 
that  a  little  renders  immune  for  much. 

Cerebration.     Brain  action,  conscious  or  unconscious. 

Chorea.  St.  Vitus's  dance;  a  nervous  disease  marked  by  irregular 
and  involuntary  movements  of  the  limbs  and  face. 

Chrestomathy.    A  collection  of  extracts  and  choice  pieces. 

367 


GLOSSARY 

Christenthum.     The  Christian  belief;  the  spirit  of  Christianity. 

Commando  exercises.  Gymnastic  exercises  whose  order  is  de- 
pendent upon  the  spoken  command  of  the  director. 

Cortex.     The  gray  matter  of  the  brain,  mostly  on  its  surface. 

Cortical.     Pertaining  to  the  cortex. 

Craniometry.     The  measurement  of  skulls. 

Cryptogamous.  Having  an  obscure  mode  of  fertilization;  or, 
of  plants  that  do  not  blossom. 

Cultus.     A  system  of  religious  belief  and  worship. 

Deutschenthum.     The  spirit  of  the  German  people. 

Diathesis.     A  constitutional  predisposition. 

Ephebic.  Pertaining  to  the  Greek  system  of  instruction  given 
to  young  men  to  fit  them  for  citizenship;  adolescent. 

Epigoni.     Successors;  followers  who  only  follow. 

Epistemology.  The  theory  of  knowledge;  that  branch  of  logic 
which  undertakes  to  explain  how  knowledge  is  possible  and 
to  define  its  limitations,  meaning,  and  worth. 

Eupeptic.      Having  good  digestion. 

Euphoria.     The  sense  of  well-being ;  of  fullness  of  life. 

Eviration.     Emasculation;  loss  of  manly  characteristics. 

Feral.      Wild  by  nature;  untamed;  undomesticated. 

Formicary.     An  artificial  ants'  nest. 

Gemiith.  Disposition;  the  entire  affective  soul  and  its  habitual 
state. 

Hebetude.      Dulness;  stupidity. 

Hedonistic.  Relating  to  hedonism,  that  form  of  Greek  phil- 
osophy which  taught  that  pleasure  is  the  chief  end  of 
existence. 

Hetaera.  A  Greek  courtesan.  This  class  was  often  highly 
trained  in  music  and  social  arts  and  represented  the  highest 
grade  of  culture  among  Greek  women. 

Heterogeny.  (1)  The  spontaneous  generation  of  animals  and 
vegetables,  low  in  the  scale  of  organization,  from  inorganic 
elements.  (2)  That  kind  of  generation  in  which  the  parent, 
whether  plant  or  animal,  produces  offspring  differing  in 
structure  or  habit  from  itself,  but  in  which  after  one  or 
more  generations  the  original  form  reappears. 

Heteronomous.      Having  a  different  name. 

Horology.  The  science  of  measuring  time  and  of  constructing 
instruments  for  that  purpose. 

Hygeia.     The  Greek  goddess  of  health;  health. 

368 


GLOSSARY 

Hypennethodic.     Methodic  to  excess;  overmethodic. 

H3rpertrophy.     Excessive  growth. 

Indiscerptible.  Incapable  of  being  destroyed  by  separation  of 
parts. 

Inhibition.  Interference  with  the  normal  result  of  a  nervous 
excitement  by  an  opposing  force. 

Irradiation.  The  diffusion  of  nervous  stimuli  out  of  the  path  of 
normal  discharge  which,  as  a  result  of  the  excitation  of  a 
peripheral  end  organ,  may  excite  other  central  organs  than 
those  directly  connected  with  it. 

Klinesological.  Pertaining  to  the  science  of  tests  and  measure- 
ments of  bodily  strength. 

Kinesometer.     An  instrument  for  measuring  muscular  strength. 

Medullation.  The  investment  of  nerve  fibers  with  a  protective 
covering  or  medullary  sheath,  consisting  of  white,  fat-like 
matter. 

Meristic.  Pertaining  to  the  levels  or  spinal  and  cerebral  seg- 
ments of  the  body. 

Metabolism.  The  act  or  process  by  which,  on  the  one  hand,  dead 
food  is  built  up  into  living  matter — anabolism,  and  by 
which,  on  the  other,  the  living  matter  is  broken  down  into 
simpler  products  within  a  cell  or  organism — catabolism. 

Metamorphosis.     Change  of  form  or  structure;  transformation. 

Metempsychosis.  The  doctrine  of  the  transmigration  of  the 
soul  from  one  body  to  another. 

Monophrastic.     Pertaining  to  or  consisting  of  a  single  phrase. 

Monotechnic.     Pertaining  to  a  single  art  or  craft. 

Morphology.  The  science  of  form  and  structure  of  plants  and 
animals  without  regard  to  function. 

Myology.     The  scientific  knowledge  of  the  muscular  system. 

Mythopoeic.     Producing  or  having  a  tendency  to  produce  myths. 

Noetic.     Of,  pertaining  to,  or  conceived  by,  mind. 

Nuance.     Slight  shade;  difference;  distinction;  degree. 

Orthogenic.     Pertaining  to  right  beginning  and  development. 

Orthopedic.     Relating  to  the  art  of  curing  deformities. 

Ossuary.     A  depository  of  dry  bones. 

Paleopsychic.     Pertaining  to  the  antiquity  of  the  soul. 

Pantheistic.  Relating  to  that  doctrine  which  holds  that  the 
e<ntire  phenomenal  universe,  including  man  and  nature,  is 
the  ever-changing  manifestation  of  God,  who  rises  to  self- 
consciousness  and  personality  only  in  man. 

369 


GLOSSARY 

Patristics.  That  department  of  study  occupied  with  the  doc- 
trines and  writings  of  the  fathers  of  the  Christian  Church. 

Phobia.     Excessive  or  morbid  fear  of  anything. 

Phyletically.     In  accordance  with  the  phylum  or  race;  racially. 

Phyletic.     Pertaining  to  a  race  or  clan. 

Phylogeny.  The  history  of  the  evolution  of  a  species  or  group; 
tribal  history;  ancestral  development  as  opposed  to  ontogeny 
or  the  development  of  the  individual. 

Phylum.  A  term  introduced  by  Haeckel  to  designate  the  great 
branches  of  the  animal  and  vegetable  kingdoms.  Each  phy- 
lum may  include  several  classes. 

Pickelhaube.     The  spiked  helmet  of  the  German  army. 

Plankton.  Sea  animals  and  plants  collectively;  distinguished 
from  coast  or  bottom  forms  and  floating  in  a  great  mass. 

Polygamic  (love).  Pertaining  to  the  habit  of  having  more  than 
one  mate  of  the  opposite  sex. 

Polyphrastic.  Having  many  phrases;  pertaining  to  rambling, 
incoherent  speech. 

Post-simian.  Pertaining  to  an  age  later  than  that  in  which 
simian  or  monkey-like  forms  prevailed. 

Prenubile.  Pertaining  to  the  age  before  sexual  maturity  or 
marriageability  is  reached. 

Prie  dieu.     A  praying  desk. 

Propedeutic.     Preliminary;  introductory. 

Prophylactic.  Any  medicine  or  measure  efficacious  in  prevent- 
ing disease. 

Pseudophobiac.  Pertaining  to  a  morbid  condition  in  which  the 
subject  is  continually  in  fear  of  having  said  something  not 
strictly  true. 

Psychogenesis.     The  origin  and  development  of  soul. 

Psychonomic.     Pertaining  to  the  laws  of    mind. 

Psychosis.  Mental  constitution  or  condition;  any  change  in  con- 
sciousness, especially  if  abnormal. 

Puberty.     The  age  of  sexual  maturity. 

Pubescent.      Relating  to  the  dawning  of  puberty. 

Pygmoid.      Of  pygmy  size  and  form. 

Rabulist.  A  chronic  wrangler;  one  who  argues  about  every- 
thing. 

Schema.  A  synopsis;  a  summary.  In  the  Kantian  sense,  a 
general  type. 

370 


GLOSSARY 

Schematism.  An  outline  of  any  systematic  arrangement;  an 
outline. 

Superfcetation.  A  second  conception  some  time  after  a  prior 
one,  by  which  two  foetuses  of  different  age  exist  together 
in  the  same  female.     Often  used  figuratively. 

Temibility.  (From  Italian  temihile,  to  be  feared.)  The  principle 
of  adjustment  of  penalty  to  crime  in  just  that  degree  neces' 
sary  to  prevent  a  repetition  of  the  criminal  act. 

Tic.      A  nervous  affection  of  the  muscles;  a  twitching. 

Transcendental.  In  the  Kantian  system  having  an  a  'priori 
character,  transcending  experience,  presupposed  in  and 
necessary  to  experience. 

Traumata.     Wounds. 

Traumatism.  A  wound;  any  morbid  condition  produced  by 
wounds  or  other  external  violence. 

Verbigeration.  The  continual  utterance  of  certain  words  or 
phrases  at  short  intervals,  without  reference  to  their  mean- 
ing, as  seen  in  insane  Gedankenflucht  or  rapid  flight  of 
thought. 


371 


INDEX 


Abstract  words,  need  of,  248. 

Accessory  and  fundamental 
movements,  9. 

Accuracy,  of  memory,  270,  273. 
overdone,  12,  22,  237. 

Acti\'ity  of  children,  motor, 
14-22. 

Adolescence,  biography  and  lit- 
erature of,  141-206. 
characterized,  6,  236-238. 

Agriculture,  31-34,  324,  325. 

Alternations  of  physical  and 
psychic  states,  47,  81,  91, 
92. 

Altruism    of    country    children, 
215. 
of  woman,  outlet  for,  290. 

Amphimixis,  psychic,  basis  of, 
294. 

Anger,  94,  99. 

Anthropometry  and  ideal  of  gym- 
nastics, 61-63. 

Arboreal  life  and  the  hand,  11. 

Art  study,  42-45,  48-52. 

Arts  and  crafts  movement,  42- 
45. 

Associations  devised  or  guided 
by  adults,  230-233. 

Astronomy,  316. 

Athletic  festivals  in  Greece,  75, 
76. 


Athletics  as  a  conversation  topic, 
110. 
dangers  and  defects  of.  111. 
records  in,  68,  69. 
Attention,  fostered  by  commando 
exercises,  57. 
rhythm  in,  47. 
spontaneous,  47. 
Authority  and  adolescence,  234, 

333-336. 
Autobiographies     of     boyhood, 

142-146. 
Automatisms,  motor,  causes  and 
kinds  of,  14-22. 
control    and    serialization    of, 

18-20. 
danger  of  premature   control 

of,  18. 
desirable,  16-18. 

Bachelor  women,  290,  304-306. 

Basal  muscles,  development  of, 
23. 

Basal  powers,  development  of, 
80,  81. 

Bathing,  105-107. 

Beauty,  age  of  feminine,  289. 

Belief,  habit  and  muscle  deter- 
mining, 8,  117. 

Bible,  the,  influence  of,  in  adoles- 
cence, 216. 


373 


INDEX 


Bible,  the,  methods  of  teaching, 
331. 
study  of,  for  girls,  218,  314, 

315. 
study  of,  in  German  method 

of  will  training,  329. 
study  of,  order  in,  358. 
study  of,  postponed,  355. 
study  of,  preparation  for,  358. 
Biography  and  adolescence,  141- 

206. 
Blood     vessels,    expansion     at 

puberty,  236. 
Blushing,  characteristic  of  puber- 
ty, 236. 
Body  training,  Greek,  75,  76. 
Botany,  316. 
Boxing,  95. 

Boys,  age  of  little  affection  in, 
235. 
dangers    of    coeducation    for, 

286-293,  295-297. 
differences  between,  and  girls, 
281-283,    285-288,    291- 
293,  295. 
latitude  in  conduct  and  studies 
of,   before   puberty,   235, 
236. 
puberty  in,  characteristics  of, 
236,  237. 
Brain  action,  unity  in,  19,  20. 
Bullying,  93,  94, 122. 
Bushido,97, 141. 

Cakewalk,  103. 

Castration,  functional  in  women, 

306. 
Catharsis,  Aristotle's  theory  of, 

3,  363. 
Character    and    muscles,     7-9, 

343. 


Children,  faults  and  crimes  of, 
120-140. 
motor  activity  of,  14-22. 
motor  defects  of,  21,  22. 
selfishness  of,  235. 
Chivalry,  medieval,  141. 
Chorea,  13,  16,  22. 
Christianity,  muscular,  55. 
Chums  and  cronies,  222,  223. 
Church,  femininity  in  the,  104, 

105. 
City   children   vs.   country   chil- 
dren, 215,  216. 
Civilized  men,  savages  physically 

superior  to,  28. 
Climbing,  hill,  108. 

muscles,  age  for  exercise  of, 
23. 
Coeducation,    dangers    in,    286- 

297. 
College,    coeducation    in,    284- 
286, 289-297. 
English  requirements  of,  264, 

265. 
woman's     ideal     school     and, 
293-295,309-321. 
Combat,    personal,    as   exercise, 

93-99. 
Commando  exercises,  57. 
restricted  for  girls,  311. 
Concentration,  117. 
Concreteness  in  modern  language 
study,  criticized,  248-252. 
Conduct,  mechanized,  336,  337. 
of    Italian    schoolboys    tabu- 
lated, 121,  122. 
weather  and,  123,124. 
Confessionalism,  of  young  wom- 
en, 166-173. 
passional  inducement  to,  363. 
Conflict,  see  Combat. 


374 


INDEX 


Control,  nervous,  through  danc- 
ing, 90. 
of  anger.  94,99. 
of  brute  instincts,  94. 
of  children's  movements,  18- 
20. 
Conversation,  athletics  in,  110. 
degeneration    in,    causes    of, 
249,  250. 
Conversion,  365,  366. 
Coordination  loosened  at  adoles- 
cence, 22. 
inherited  tendencies  of  mus- 
cular, 80. 
Corporal  punishment,  338-341. 
Countrj'   children  vs.   city   chil- 
dren, 215,  216. 
Crime,  juvenile,  126,  131-140. 
causes  of,  134. 
education  and,  135. 
reading  and,  137. 
Cruelty,  a  juvenile  fault,  93,  120, 

121,  123,  133. 
Culture  heroes,  317,  329. 

Dancing,  88-93,  311. 

Deadly  sins,  the  seven,  vs.  mod- 
ern juvenile  faults,  123. 

Debate  and  will-training,  342, 
343. 

Doll  curve,  82. 

Domesticity,  319. 

Dramatic  instinct  of  pubertV; 
128. 

Drawing,  curve  of  stages  of,  48- 
50. 

Dueling,  95,  96. 

Education,  art  in,  42-45,  50-52. 
crime  and,  135,  140. 
industrial,  29-34,  324,  325. 

25  375 


Education,  intellectual,  234-276, 
manual,  35-52. 
moral  and  religious,  324-366. 
of   boys,    235,    236,    286-293, 

295-297. 
of  girls,  277-323. 
physical,  53-72. 
Effort,  as  a  developing  force,  47, 

347-350. 
Emotions,    dancing    completest 
language  of  the,  90. 
religion  directed  to,  216. 
Endurance,  347-350. 
Energy  and  laziness,  91,  92. 
English,  language  and  literature, 
pedagogy  of,  238-265. 
pedagogic     degeneration     in, 

causes  of,  240-252. 
requirements  of  college,   264, 

265. 
sense    language,    dangers    of, 
248-252. 
Ennui,  34:1,  3^2. 
Erect  position  and  true  life,  10. 
Ethics,  study  of,  criticized,  140. 
Ethical   judgments  of   children, 

220-222. 
Euphoria  and  exercise,  65. 
Evolution,  movement  as  a  meas- 
ure of,  10. 
Exercise,  health  and,  28. 
measurements  and,  61,  62. 
music  and,  57. 
nascent  periods  and,  81. 
rhythm  and,  57. 

Farm  work,  31-34. 
Fatigue,  at  puberty,  236. 

chorea  and,  9. 

not   a  cause  for  punishment, 
342. 


INDEX 


Fatigue,  play  and,  114,  115. 
restlessness  expressive  of,  16. 
result  of  labor  with  defective 

psychic  impulsion,  116. 
rhythm  of  activity  and,  91,  92. 
will-culture  and,  117. 
Faults  of  children,  120-126. 
Favorite  sounds  and  words,  252- 

258. 
Fecundity    of    college    women, 

280. 
Femininity  in  the  church,  104. 
in  the  school  and  college,  287, 
288,  291,  292. 
Feminists,  293,  294. 
Fighting,  93. 
Flogging,  338-341. 
Foreign   languages,   dangers  of, 

241-244. 
France,  religious  training  in,  329, 

330. 
Friendships  of  adolescence,  209, 

'  210,222,223. 
Fundamental  and  accessory,  9, 

23. 
Future  life,  as  a  school  teaching, 
330,331. 

Games,  73-119. 
groups,  100. 
Panhellenic,  69,  75. 
Gangs,  organized  juvenile,  131. 
Genius,    early    development    of, 

147-152. 
Germany,  will-training   in,  328, 

329. 
Girl  graduates,  aversion  to  mar- 
riage   of,   289,    296,   298, 
303,  304. 
fecundity  of.  280. 
sterility  of,  280,  304. 


Girls,  and  boys,  differences  be- 
tween, 281-283,  285-288, 
291-293,  295. 
coeducation    for,    dangers    of, 

286-297. 
education  of,  277-323. 
education  of,  humanistic,  293- 

295,321. 
education  of,  manners  in,  312. 
education    of,    more    difficult 

than  of  boys,  283. 
education  of,  nature  in,  315- 

317. 
education    of,    regularity    in, 

312. 
education  of,  religion  in,  314, 

315. 
ideal    school   and   curriculum 

for,  309-321. 
overdrawing  their  energy,  305. 
Grammar,   place    of,   240,   244- 

246. 
Greece,  athletic  festivals  in,  75. 
Greek  body  training,  76. 
Group  games,  100,  101. 
Growth,  at  puberty,  236-238. 
gymnastics  and  its  effect  on, 

65,  66. 
of  muscle  structure  and  func- 
tion, measure  of,  9. 
periods,  81. 
rhythmic,  81. 
Gymnastics,    effect    on    growth, 
its,  65,  66. 
ideal  of,  and  anthropometry, 

61-63. 
ideals,  its  four  unharmonized, 

and,  63,  64. 
military  ideals  and,  56. 
nascent  periods  and,  81. 
patriotism  and,  55. 

376 


INDEX 


Gymnastics,     proportion      a  n  d 
measurement    for,     criti- 
cized, 62. 
Swedish,53-55,  57,  62,  311. 

Habits  and  muscle,  8,  117. 

Hand  and  arboreal  life,  10. 

Health,  exercise  and,  28. 
of  girls,  286,  302,  308-313. 

Heredity,  a  factor  in  develop- 
ment, 80,  81. 

High  School,  the,  coeducation  in, 
287-289. 
language  study  and,  240-257. 

Hill-climbing,  108. 

Historic  interest,  growth  of,  266- 
268. 

Home,  restraint  of,  detrimental, 
208. 

Honor,  among  hoodlums,  133. 
in  sports,  95-97,  110. 

Hoodlums,  109,  131-134. 

Hysteria,  364. 

Imagination,  at  puberty,  236. 

of  children,  127. 

play  and,  118. 
Individuality,     growth     of,     at 

puberty,  237. 
Industrial  education,  29-34. 
Industry  and  movement,  24. 
Inhibition,  18. 
Intellect,    adolescence    in,    236, 

237. 
Intemperance,  297,  298. 

Knightly  ideas  of  youth,  141. 
Knowing  and  doing,  77,  343. 

Language,  concreteness  in,  de- 
generation through,  248- 
252. 


Language,   dangers   of,   through 
eye  and  hand,  246-248. 
precision  curve  of,  254. 
vs.  literature,  244-246. 
Latin,  danger  of,  241-244. 
Laughter,  114. 
Laziness  and  energy,  91,  92. 
Lies,  126-131. 

Literary  men,  youth  of,  148-155, 
175-190. 
women,  youth  of,  158-175. 
Literature      and       adolescence, 
141-206. 
language  vs.,  244-246. 

Machinery  and  movement,  24. 
Mammae,  loss  of  function  of,  305. 
Manners,  22. 

in  girls'  education,  312. 
Manual  training,  35-52. 

defects  and  criticisms  of,  38, 

39. 
difficulties  of,  36. 
Marriage,   dangers   in  delay  of, 
298-300,  304,  305. 
influenced     by     coeducation, 

280,  289-292,  295-297. 
influenced  by  college  training, 
290,  294,  298,  304. 
Mastery  in  art-craft,  equipment 

for,  37. 
Maternity,  dangers  of  deferred, 

304,  305. 
Measurements  and  exercise,  61. 
Memory,     accuracy,     age,     and 
kinds  of,  270-276. 
sex  curve  of  types  of,  271. 
Military  drill,  101,  102. 

ideals  and  gj'mnastics,  56. 
Mind  and  motility,  7. 
Money  sense,  219,  220. 


377 


INDEX 


Monthly    period    and    Sabbath, 

285,286,312,313. 
Motherhood,    training   for,   309, 

319. 
Motor,  activity,  primitive,  25. 

automatisms,  14. 

defects  of  children,  21. 

defects,  general,  27. 

economies,  59. 

powers,  general  growth  of,  10- 
14. 

precocity,  13. 

psychoses,  muscles  and,  7. 

recapitulation,  77,  108. 

regularity,  88. 
Movement  and  industry,  24. 
Movements,  passive,  107. 

precocity  of,  12,  22. 
Muscle  tension  and  thought,  12. 
Muscles,  per  cent  by  weight  of 
body,  7. 

character  and,  7-9,  343. 

motor  psychoses  and,  7. 

small,  and  thought,  12. 

will  and,  7-9,  343. 
Muscular  Christianity,  55. 
Music  and  exercise,  57. 
Myths,  study  of,  318. 

Nascent   periods  and   exercises, 

81. 
Nature  in  girls'  education,  315- 

317. 

Obedience,  234,  333-336. 

Panhellenic  games,  69,  75. 
Passive  movements,  107. 
Patriotism  and  gymnastics,  56. 
Peace,  man's  normal  state,  34. 
Periodicity  in  growth,  81. 
in  women,  285,  286,  312,  313. 


Philology,  dangers  of,  244-246. 
Plasticity  of  growth  at  puberty, 

237. 
Play,  73-119. 

course  of  study,  113. 
imagination  and,  118. 
prehistoric  activity  and,  73- 

75. 
problem,  108,  109. 
sex  and,  102,112. 
stages  and  ages  of,  79-86. 
work  and,  114-119. 
Plays  and  games,  codification  of, 

111. 
Precocity,  motor,  12,  22. 

in  the  motor  sphere,  81. 
Predatory    organizations,     131- 

134. 
Primitive  motor  activity,  25,  26. 
Punishments,  337-342. 

in  school,  causes  of,  122. 

Reading  age,  258-265. 
crime  and,  137. 
curve,  254. 
Reason,  development  of,  268. 
Recapitulation  and  motor  hered- 
ity, 77. 
Records  in  athletics,  68,  69. 
Regularity  in  education  of  girls, 

312,313. 
Religious  training,  age  for,  364- 
366. 
forgirls,  314,  315. 
in  Europe,  328-330. 
premature,  362-364. 
two  methods  of,  330,  331. 
Retardation  as  a  means  of  broad- 
ening, 314. 
Revivalists.  315. 
Rhythm,  exercise  and,  57. 


378 


INDEX 


Rhythm,  in  primitive  activities, 
86. 
of  work  and  rest,  88. 

Savages   physically  superior   to 

civilized  men,  28. 
School,  language  study  in,  238- 
258. 

need  of  enthusiasm  in,  208. 

punishments  in,  causes  of,  122. 

reading  in,  258,  259. 
Scientific  men,   youth  of,    156- 

158. 
Sedentary  life,  24. 
Selfishness  of  children,  235. 
Sex,  play  and,  112,  113. 

sports  and,  102-104. 
Slang  curve,  254. 

value  of,  255,  256. 
Sleep,  in  education  of  girls,  310. 
Sloyd,  origin,  aims,  criticism  of, 

40-42. 
Social  activities,  131. 

organizations  of  youth,   131- 
134, 224-233. 
Solitude,  222. 

Sounds,  favorite,  and  words,  252. 
Sports,  values  of  different,  93-99. 

codification  of.  111. 

sexual  influence  in,  102-104. 

team  work  in,  100,  101. 
Spurtiness,  13. 
Sterility  of  girl  graduates,  280, 

304. 
Story-telling,  interest  in,  258. 
Struggle-for-lifeurs,  33. 
Students'  associations,  227. 
Stuttering  and  stammering,  21 . 
Swedish  gymnastics,  53-55,  57, 

62,311. 
Swimming,  105-107. 


Talent,    early    development    of, 

147. 
Teachers,  aversions  to,  211. 
Team  spirit,  100. 
Technical  courses,  need  of,  52. 
Telegraphic  skill,  45. 
Temibility,  138. 
Theft,  juvenile,  122, 123,  131. 
Thought  and  muscle  tension,  8, 

12, 117. 
Transitory    nature    of   youthful 

experiences,  144. 
Tree  life  and  erect  posture,  10. 
Truancy, 124-126. 
Truth-telling,  129. 
Turner  movement,  53. 

Unmarried  women,  dangers  to, 
298-300. 

Vagabondage,  125. 

Vagrancy,  125. 

Virility  in  the  Church,  104. 

Weather  and  conduct,  123,  124. 
Will,  muscles  and,  7,  8,  12,  117, 
326,  327,  343. 

training,  327-351. 
Womanly,  the  eternal,  306,  322. 
Women,  bachelors,  290,  304-306. 

dangers  to,  in  not  marrying, 
298-300,  304,  305. 

education  of,  ideal,  309-321. 

ideal,  321,322. 

young,    confessionalism    of, 
166-173. 
Work  at  its  best,  play,  119. 

play  and,  114. 

rest  and,  rhythm  of,  88. 
Wrestling,  98,  99. 

Young  Men's  Christian  Associa- 
tion, 55. 


379 


(1) 


A  PRACTICAL,  COMMON-SENSE  MANUAL. 

The  Care  and  Feeding  of  Children. 

A  Catechism  for  the  Use  of  Mothers  and  Children's 
Nurses.  By  L.  Emmett  Holt,  M.D.,  LL.D.,  Professor  of 
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"  Just  the  thing  to  put  into  the  hands  of  a  young  mother." 

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D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY.  NEW  YORK. 


1 


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